Rating: 3.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 18/52 | Jess Franco
It all began last year in Istanbul, on the shore of the Black Sea. Or, at least, I think it did, because at the time I wasn't quite sure what was real and what wasn't.
Jimmy runs out to the beach. He digs up his trumpet case and pulls out the trumpet. He doesn’t remember why he buried it. Playing it again gives him such relief.
While playing, he sees a form out in the waves. It looks like a body. He hangs his horn on the fence and runs into the water. He drags a blonde woman out. It’s Wanda, a woman he met at some point. She’s dead.
Jimmy remembers the house party where he first met her. Jimmy is playing with a band. It’s the house of millionaire playboy Ahmed Kortobawi. Wanda walks in, dressed in fur. She catches everyone’s eye — Ahmed, Kip, Olga, and, of course, Jimmy.
Wanda and Ahmed run off to kiss. Kip and Olga strip her and whip her. Jimmy catches it all and tries to ignore it. After he leaves, Ahmed draws a knife and cuts Wanda’s shoulder. He drinks blood from the wound.
The memory sends Jimmy on a trip to escape. In Rio, he meets and dates a lounge singer named Rita. But one day, while playing a club, Wanda comes through the door, dressed in furs.
I was hypnotized. I wanted to run, but I had to follow her. I was trapped in a whirlpool that kept sucking me in deeper and deeper. Where was I going? Why was this happening to me? Why couldn't I fight it?
The narration is noir with a West Coast psychedelic vibe. The closest vibe I can think of is Inherent Vice.
Whenever Jimmy chases Wanda, the movie turns to slow motion — that sludgy running from dreams where you can’t catch up or escape.
This movie has that hazy feel that I get from a David Lynch movie. Maybe it’s the jazz or a woman in trouble. Is it the thin membrane that separates dream logic and reality? Maybe it’s the arch eroticism with an anxious edge.
Manfred Mann Chapter Three, his avant jazz group, did the score. It’s outstanding and does everything to set the sinister and otherworldly vibes.
Jess Franco finally makes sense to me. I assumed his cult was about his awesomely bad movies. But this movie is quite good!