Rating: 4/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 35/52 | Jean Rollin
Michelle ran away from a religious asylum. Upon return, the nuns keep her constrained in her room. Because she will not speak, they take her at odd hours to a room where they spray her with ice-cold water, then return her to the confines of a straightjacket.
One day, Michelle notices a new patient named Marie, who quietly sits in a rocking chair all day. Marie comes to Michelle’s room and helps Michelle out of her straightjacket. Michelle wants to escape, but Marie wants to understand, in her words, what is “wrong with her.”
They say I'm sick. Very sick. But I try to find out what's wrong and I can't. I'm afraid of everything. Sometimes, my whole body shakes.
Still, the two escape at night to discover the world outside the asylum walls.
— This other place; Where is it? — It starts outside these walls and ends wherever we want.
As the two travel forward, their past catches up to them in memories they would rather forget. Their identities emerge in light of one another, for better or worse.
The film explores the meaning of artistry and how it manifests in an exploitative world. Who we are and what we want must always filter through capital’s demands. If we cannot meet those demands, we are diagnosed and put in asylums. Those who live on the margins are the ones who cannot play along and would rather risk the edges than the asylums. But even they have rules — what is community but a shared ethos? The question then becomes: whose rules do you fear more?
The two women join up with a troupe of traveling exotic dancers. Notably, all the dancers are black women for sale for “something extra.” From Michelle’s perspective, these women have a freedom she longs to know. But once inside, the romantic ideal fades, and the transactional nature comes into light.
This film is a bit of an outlier for Jean Rollin. Similar to The Night of the Hunted, which deals with memory and disillusion, this film suggests that the sex-centered power that his lesbian vampires exude in other films is not the liberation it appears to be. I felt The Night of the Hunted suffered from uneven storytelling and reliance on titillation. This film takes a less voyeuristic approach (until the last 20 minutes).
An ice skating scene at the middle point is such a transcendent moment.
It’s also worth mentioning that one of the exotic dancers performs to a disco interpolation of Für Elise.
This may not be Rollin’s most beloved film, but it is his most effective filmmaking I’ve seen to date.