Reviews

Mostly filmed the year Smith's orgy-comedy Flaming Creatures became a famous obscenity case, Normal Love is a kind of lyrical sequel, replacing the earlier film's bleached-out black and white with lush color and its urban claustrophobia with rural locales outside New York City. The cast of "creatures," including Mario Montez and Tiny Tim, perform in a series of disjointed sequences that oscillate between trancelike impersonation and utterly reflexive self-parody: a mermaid in a tub, for example, is larger than life yet totally ridiculous, her tail phonier than the worst B-movie costume. Smith's gender visions, more radical than mainstream concepts of drag, conflate dress-up with striptease, ludicrous acting with a sure belief that one can become one's costume. His visual style is a dense and demented re-creation of von Sternberg, the smallest fashion accessory a radiant surface as camera and character--and character and costume--move in a coordinated ballet at once graceful and spastic. It is the movie to cherish for the generations to come.

The predecessor of Un Chien Andalou and directed by the lone woman filmmaker of her time, La Coquille et le Clergyman is one of the most celebrated of French avant-garde movies of the '20s, partly because Antonin Artaud wrote the script, partly because the British censor of the time banned it with the legendary words 'If this film has a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable'. Artaud was reputedly unhappy with Dulac's realization of his scenario, and it's true that the story's anti-clericalism (a priest develops a lustful passion that plunges him into bizarre fantasies) is somewhat undermined by the director's determined visual lyricism. But the fragmentation of the narrative and the innovative imagery remain provocative, and the film is of course fascinating testimony to the currents of its time.

I saw the movie when i was a teen ager and found it interesting only because Koo Stark, who at that time was in close contention with the Royal family, was exposed in it. I recently watched it again and was more disappointed. The movie is horribly directed and acted all through.It contains unbelievable scene sequence and the story is so unrealistic that it starts to bore after fifteen minutes. I wonder whether there is any connection of the plot with the writing of the legend Marquis de Sade. Everyone in the movie seem to be obsessed with one and only one feeling, and that is sex. The major sex scene at the end of the movie is also unerotic and boring. Don't watch this movie even if u r a fan of Koo Stark.