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MANHATTAN LOVE SUICIDES

Richard Kern, one of the principle directors in the Cinema of Transgression movement that came out of the underground New York film scene, has made more than his fair share of challenging work. While none of the Transgression films I've seen have been anything near what I would call a "masterpiece", many of them are incredibly interesting in their blatant disregard for conventional filmmaking practices. The vast majority of them are poverty row productions, mostly short films, featuring unknown and untrained actors and actresses portraying desperate and sometimes sickening characters - or sometimes simply playing themselves - in scenarios designed to offend what the moral majority would define as "good taste". With films like FINGERED, RIGHT SIDE OF MY BRAIN, and SUBMIT TO ME NOW, Richard Kern embodied this particular aspect of the Transgression movement and MANHATTAN LOVE SUICIDES is his greatest achievement.

MANHATTAN LOVE SUICIDES is a collection of four short stories. The first, STRAY DOGS, is, for the most part, a dialogue-free exercise in twisted humor. A painter wanders around the streets of New York with his girlfriend, attracting the attention of a twitchy young man. The young man begins to follow the painter, first through the streets, then into a bank, then finally to his home, pawing over him, rubbing his arms, smiling politely, buying him a slice of pizza. All of which the painter ignores. When the painter smiles at a punk outside the door to his house, the young man reacts, pushing the punk away. Inside, the young man tries harder to gain the painter's attention but to no avail. Finally, the young man tears his own arm off and collapses to the floor, dying. The painter simply laughs, produces a pad of paper, and begins to sketch the dying man.

I would never presume to truly know the intentions of an artist - be it a director, writer, painter, etc. All I know is the product they produce and whatever meaning I divine from the work is mine and mine alone. That's the purpose of film criticism. What I take from STRAY DOGS is not quite pleasant. The obviously gay young man is presented as unbalanced and, obviously, self destructive. Completely over-acted - by design I would guess - the young man is not only a pathetic character but a loathsome character as well. In this context, the homosexual is reduced to a pointless, incessant, and obnoxious intrusion into the world of the heterosexual. On the other hand, the reaction of the painter reeks of homophobia. His final mocking laughter and absolute disregard of the man's dying breaths seem to give this weight. Both ends of the spectrum are unpleasant and no middle ground exists. STRAY DOGS is a film without solution, not by fault, but by design.

The second story, WOMAN AT THE WHEEL, is a bit more straightforward. A young woman wants to take a man - Nick Zedd, another essential filmmaker in the Cinema of Transgression movement - driving but he refuses to let her behind the wheel. She finally boots him out in a parking lot. We then see the young woman, this time in a much fancier style of dress, try to take an older, more well-to-do man for a drive. Again, the man forces his way into the driver's seat. Much like the younger punk, he screams at her, insults her, declares ownership of the car. Later, she breaks a bottle over his head and drives off. The young woman is then driving down a somewhat deserted patch of road. She's harassed by a group of young men and drives off only to turn back around and run them down. She imagines men writhing naked in and around her car, groping a naked woman - presumably her. When she comes to her senses, she crashes her car into a brick wall.

The idea behind WOMAN AT THE WHEEL is much simpler than STRAY DOGS to decipher but no easier to swallow. That women are often forced to sublimate themselves to the will of men is not something easily disputed. Neither one of the relationships presented in this film - if you can call them that - are exactly pleasant. Both men are verbally abusive, both men simply take. Both men obviously perceive themselves as the more important figure in the coupling and both lay claim to not only the property of the woman - her car - but also, in the woman's imagined rape, her body. Where the film becomes complicated is in it's final shot. Is Kern suggesting that the only way a woman can be free is to be dead? Or that there simply isn't any escape from the sexism so deeply rooted in our society, that any road will lead to the same dead end? I choose the latter.

THRUST IN ME, the third story, is a bleak little film. A woman sits at home reading from "How to be Your Own Best Friend" and "Suicide" before wandering into the bathroom. She fills the bathtub, tears a picture of Jesus from a book and sticks it to the wall. She gets undressed, slips into the tub and slits her wrists. Her boyfriend meanwhile wanders the streets, accosting a man fighting with his girlfriend. He returns home and takes a shit. Finding they are out of toilet paper, he pulls the picture of Jesus from the wall and wipes his ass with it. Then, finally noticing his girlfriend's body in the bathtub, he pulls his dick out and orally rapes the corpse, ejaculating on it's face. The film ends with the man standing on the roof, looking out at the city, his girlfriend's body wrapped in a tarp on the ground beside him.

The obvious gender roles from WOMAN AT THE WHEEL are complicated in THRUST IN ME. Nick Zedd plays both the boyfriend and the girlfriend - except in one shot where a body double was used. Again, this story seems to contain a hint of misogyny. The boyfriend's complete denial of his girlfriend's death and his use of her corpse as simply a sex object seem to lend proof to this claim. The incredibly passive performance of Zedd as the girlfriend, looking longingly into a mirror, a picture of her boyfriend prominently placed in frame, makes this woman seem completely subservant to her obviously uncaring boyfriend. We might conclude that her act of suicide is caused by the lack of love she receives from the man she is devoted to. His lack of empathy and emotion at finding her dead is disheartening. His act of rape shows there is no escape from the cycle of abuse.

The final story, I HATE YOU NOW, starts with the only positive relationship in the entire series. A man and a woman are making love. After they have finished, the man goes into the next room to lift weights while the woman makes him some fried eggs. When he sits down at the kitchen table, he stares at the eggs on his plate. When we see his face we know why. He is horribly deformed, the right side of his face looking strangely like the meal before him. He collects a few bags of pot and goes out to sell them, leaving the woman at home to do some ironing. She picks up a photo of the man and gazes lovingly at it. Without a moment's hesitation, she raises the iron to her face, burning herself horribly. When the man returns home, he's furious at what she's done. Loading up the bar with all the available weights, he places the bar on his neck, killing himself. Devastated, the woman burns herself alive.

This seems to be the only film of the bunch that portrays a woman in a purely positive light. The woman's act of violence towards herself is never really explained. It could be read as either an attempt to ease her lover's insecurities or an attempt to make herself more like the man she loves. His reaction is either one of selfish anger - destroying her physical beauty, rendering her ugly to him - or of guilt - her destroying her beauty because of her attachment and love for him. Either way, this is the only one of the films that I connected to on a purely emotional level. It's a mini-tragedy. By beginning the story with lovemaking - an act obviously being enjoyed - Kern places this story in a different context than the other films where sex is viewed as an act of control or dominance. These were two happy people. Though their bond might not have been all that strong - it is rather easily severed - it was healthy. That makes the deaths of the lovers that much more powerful. This is the best of the four films.