Review of Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) by Cli O — 26 Jun 2008

Jan Svankmajer(Alice), uses the same stop motion and puppetry techniques he has become legend for in a movie about masturbation, but containing almost no explicit sexuality. Six strangers bump into each other, exchange glances, and end up becoming th.

..(read more)e objects of the others affections, which manifests in the construction(for most of the movie), of elaborate Rube Goldbergian sexual apparatus's. How do you have sex with someone who's only an image on a TV screen? It's here, as well as a straw puppet S&M scene, snorting dough, and fish toe sucking, yes that too.

There's also an amazing ending, which ties all idiosyncratic strings together brilliantly merging politics, sexuality, and psychology in it's final moment and literal, climax. Like most Svankmajer stuff there's no dialog, and it's amazing the amount of ideas infused in the film only through actions, gestures, and inventions.

Hard to find but well worth it. A masterpiece of sexual obsession, repression, and inter-connection. An unlikely film about comming out of the proberbial closet.