A short film inspired by the work of Steven Spielberg, starring Joes Brauers and Cherise Silvestri as
Bully and Candy. Part of The Young Man as a Movie Star (Paranoia, Opulence, Perversion, Competition)
Perversion
DCP, 14 minutes, Dutch Mountain Film, the Netherlands 2022, all rights reserved
A mother's frustration, about the delusional way her son deals with the death of his father, prompts her to intoxicate him with drink and drugs, until they both lose all control.
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Jurgen Lisse PRODUCTION DESIGN: Marieke Vandenbosch WARDROBE: Lotte Noordermeer HAIR AND MAKE-UP: Laura van Kolk FIRST AD: Frieder Wallis
LINE PRODUCER: Laura Bouwmeester
COMPOSER: Stijn Hosman EDITORS: Bart Groenendaal, Elmer Leupen SOUND DESIGN: Jaim Sahuleka
PRODUCERS: Wilant Boekelman, Rogier Kramer
WITH: Joes Brauers, Cherise Silvestri
The Young Man as a Movie Star (Paranoia, Opulence, Perversion, Competition) is a film installation comprised of four narrative short films. The films are screened simultaneously in the exhibition space, on four separate screens with separate audio.
Each film depicts a variation on a troubled relationship between a young man (20) and a mature woman (50), played each time by the same two actors, and shot in the same location.
Each film is inspired by the oeuvre of a 20th century male film director, for whom female-male relations form an important pillar in their work (Godard, Hitchcock, Spielberg and Von Trier).
The films are shot in a specific style, with a distinct narrative, tone and score–while across the screens, the characters gestures, their viewpoints and the situations they are in, are adjusted to form a web of intersecting moments and cross-references, linking the films together.
Starting and ending at different times, the films loop to repeat the cycle of interconnections with each round, allowing the viewer to drift at will between the screens and come up with their own interpretation.
Paranoia, inspired by the oeuvre of Jean-Luc Godard, depicts a love affair between an older woman and a younger man, who spend an afternoon together. As the woman insinuates her husband might be spying on them, the young man becomes increasingly paranoid. In Opulence, a short film-noir inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's work, the young man is a runaway terrorist, wearing a bomb-vest. He ends up on the porch of a manic housewife who has just murdered her husband- thereby offering her a cynical possibility for escape. In Perversion, shot in dramatic widescreen and inspired by the work of Steven Spielberg, a mother's frustration with the manner in which her son is coping with the death of his father, leads her to offer him weed and ecstasy until they both lose all control. In Competition, filmed with hand-held camerawork and inspired by the films of Lars von Trier, two colleague performers rehearse a dance piece on the beach. When the woman quits, to claim she is exploited by the (absent) choreographer- who also happens to be the young man's lover- and asks for the young man's solidarity-the resulting inner conflict leads the young man to seek relief in self-harm.
As much as it is an ode to cinema, the work proposes a form of echoing seriality, by the correspondence of imagery and dialogue over the four screens- an intended distraction for the viewer, as a way to break the principle of one dominant, central narrative presented on a singular screen. Channeled through melodramatic fiction and black humour, using and abusing the power of narrative structures over our way of making sense of the world, the work hints at the classic Freudian mechanisms underlying cinema. In order to challenge the traditional behavioural patterns of the 'young man',
it employs the 'older woman' as the messenger who–in her different configurations as a mother, a lover, a colleague and a housewife-thus travelling through the cinematic stereotypes traditionally assigned to her–works upon the young mans spirit, until he gets it: change is needed, and his interpretation of manhood might be a crucial factor
in achieving this change.
