Review of The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) by Sandra S — 09 Aug 2009

To describe the film as an "exhilarating ride through film history" hasn't done it any good - people seem to go there with the wrong expectations, mainly to have a good time and giggle away even at scenes and interpretations which aren't meant to be amusing at all. They even laughed their heads off when Michael Redgrave playing a schizophrenic ventriloquist "murders" his doll in an excerpt from "Devil Doll", or when Zizek explained about the different levels (super-ego, ego and it) in "Psycho" (which, by the way, made perfect sense to me).

What you really get when you go see the film is a complex, intellectually challenging lesson in psychoanalysis and film theory which helps opening up some new perspectives - some of Zizek's views are of course debatable, and psychoanalytic interpretation to me has its obvious shortcomings. It is actually quite hard sitting through the 2 1/2 hours if you have no previous knowledge of film or psychoanalytical terminology. But iif you do,and if you're a curious, open and critically minded person who loves to get to the bottom of things and discussing them, you'll most certainly enjoy it.