The Worst Film Ever

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

When he was a little boy, Charles saw his mother naked, and he has been obsessed with his mother and naked women ever since. He pays a psychiatrist to listen to him talk about his mother, and he pays a woman named Lisa to take off her clothes the way his mother did, giving Paul Cox, the director, an excuse to film some full frontal nudity. In between, Charles writes letters to his dead mother, addressed to himself, and goes around looking for statues of naked women to feel up.But I guess that was not enough for Cox, so he gave Lisa a girlfriend, who is a lesbian, and they have sex together, and we get to watch. But Charles wants to watch too, so he pays them for the privilege. And that was not enough for Cox, so when Charles goes to look at David's art, we get to see David with a naked woman. And then when Charles kills David so he can have Lisa for himself (just to watch, not to touch), he has a sculptor disguise David's corpse as a statue. A naked statue, of course.Now, lest we get the idea that Charles is a pervert (or that Cox is a pervert for wanting to make a movie like this), we have Lisa's assurance that Charles is a kind, sensitive, sweet man. And then Cox wraps the whole seedy tale up in a lot of art: we have the organ that Charles plays for the church, we have operatic music unrelentingly going on in the background, we have sculpture and paintings, we have arrangements of flowers, and we have an art class, where a woman poses nude.In other words, Cox really put some lipstick on this pig.

A middle-aged man is unable to have relationships with women, apparently a byproduct of his strict upbringing we learn via flashbacks. It is by turns provocative, funny, and pretentious, but always interesting and definitely quirky. Kaye is well cast as the man-child in search of beauty while Best is lovely as one of the objects of his affection. Among the amusing characters are the philosophical postman and Best's hack artist boyfriend. Cox directs with a sense of freshness, helped considerably by the ever-present music from Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor." The flashback scenes of Kaye's childhood are tinged with Oedipal feelings, simultaneously sad and erotic.

I've seen many films by Paul Cox but only one or two continue to impress me after all these years - Man of Flowers (1983) is one of them. Taking on familiar Cox themes such as loneliness and sexual repression, Man of Flowers adds an eloquent European feel to its Australian setting. Although the story is not a conventional linear narrative, Cox combines distinctive visual tones (super-8 flashbacks/ conventional framing such as the striptease at the beginning)) to capture different aspects of the protagonist's reclusive life (played by Norman Kaye). What is unique about this film is its refusal to subscribe to any cinematic norm. Thus we get a philosophical postman who adds a touch of off-centered eccentricity to an already edgy patchwork of lesbianism, blackmail and oedipal longing. The only sad aspect of the film is its low-budget which has seriously impaired its standing as a classic. The sound is not the best on VHS although the operatic score (Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor) more than compensates for this flaw. I presume the original budget of $250,000 was not spent enhancing the sound quality.

The storyline is secondary to the telling of the hero. The journeys into his (our) madness (?) are beautiful beautiful, as are we in our most tender selves. I suggest seeing the film of course, I also suggest regular visits to our tender self. The natural beauty of the model is astonishing.