Conspirators of Pleasure

Essentially a silent film (there's no dialogue, but plentiful music and sound effects, along with occasional and unsubtitled background chatter), Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's first (mostly) live-action feature charts the hypnotically bizarre erotic obsessions of a sextet of ordinary citizens. Though most or all of them have jobs, each one has apparently devoted his/her life to his/her fetish; indeed, some of them have managed to coordinate business and pleasure in a way that maximizes the fulfillment derived from each. Intriguingly, these six societal transgressors are the only people we meet throughout the film; the absence of any "normal" characters suggests that a sort of symbiotic auto-eroticism is supplanting traditional sexual relations in modern life. At bottom, it's a movie about masturbation...and just as masturbation often leaves its sole participant physically satisfied but emotionally unfulfilled, Svankmajer's cinematic preoccupation with self-stimulation dazzles from a distance, without ever touching the viewer (in either sense). Ultimately, the film is more a virtuoso stunt than a genuine work of art--an entertaining and disturbing stunt, and as good a picture of its kind as I can imagine, but one that necessarily appeals only to the intellect. Recommended all the same. (M. D'Angelo)