The story tries to sell itself as feminist but to me, a woman watching, it was anything but. The synopsis is, âWhen an injured male leftist on the run discovers the remote stronghold of the Female Liberation Army, a radical feminist terrorist group whose mission is to usher in a female world order, one of the members takes pity on him and hides him in the basement. However, the man in the basement is just one of many secrets threatening to disrupt the FLAâs mission from within. Balancing sharp social commentary and salacious popcorn entertainment, iconic filmmaker Bruce LaBruce has created an experience thatâs a blast to watch and just as much fun to dissect afterward.â Sounds great. But when you âdissectâ each part of what you watched, you walk away with something completely different. I can sum it up simply by saying it was made as an excuse to be sexual and extreme.
I was surprised to read that Indiewire proclaimed this as one of the fifteen greatest lesbian films of all time because if thatâs the case, lesbians have a very low bar unless bad sex scenes are the most important factor in their rating system. There are a few reasons I say that. One is because the acting wasnât a crucial element of the actorâs abilities to writer/director Bruce LaBruce. While watching a feature film, an audience member would like the actors to be able to pull off a line. Sex scenes are littered throughout for they must be more essential they be there rather than be good to the creator of the film. The first sex scene, outside of the very X-Rated gay porn (being watched by two female leads and framed nicely for us to watch, too), isnât good either. It appears as though the actors arenât comfortable with one another and the song that was chosen to play during their lovemaking, which literally screams, âDown with the Patriarchy,â is so bad it makes the ears of anyone within auditory range of the tune hurt slightly.
There is some clever cinematography that suggests LaBruce does have a gift for how to bring a story together, such as when the women in the film turn their male leftist stowaway into a female by showing us what I assume were real shots of the procedure in different stages, but other sloppy editing decisions makes the rest of the work hard to forgive.
Also, having these characters attempt to make a statement about the objectifying of women by men and a patriarchal society is totally missed. As a woman, I found it to be the opposite of what the premise alleges. The Female Separatists want to be heard, accounted for and treated as equals and then to take over. Classes on âHERstoryâ are taught to bored young women who want only to get back to the bedroom and have pillow fights, complete with feathers, of course, and outside of repeating some philosophical quotes, it doesnât seem anything theyâre learning is really sinking in. But why would it? After all, Big Mother (Susanne SachĂe as Susanne Sachsse) gives them no reason to want to stay. Sheâs every bit the tyrant that she claims all men to be, ordering the girls, forbidding them and even cruelly punishing them. Women are more nurturing by nature so the idea that such a sadistically hate-filled charter would exist seems ludicrous. Surely fantasy could explain the purpose of the film but not a good one. However, there is also learning what Parthenogenesis means. We are told that Parthenogenesis is a type of sexual reproduction where the egg develops an embryotic form without male penetration. This has yet to be found in mammals. Will one or more of the mistresses in the film be the first to carry this to term? If you can stay with this intensely misguided film long enough, it does appear this is the big question LaBruce was leading us to. Men are pigs and women are creation. If he had wanted to be taken more seriously, I believe LaBruce would have been, but he needed to stick one message. Even then it was mired in a hodgepodge of events that made the narrative anything but engaging. I donât know, maybe this can catch some future cult following but I would be surprised if it did.
