Well Deserved Praise

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Yesterday I saw "Tiresia" and I do not know what kind of magic this movie has to be so attractive. I saw six times the introduction, with the awesome allegro of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and only lava on the screen. The story is very weird, beginning with in the red light district of Paris, with many travesties, most of them Brazilian and speaking Portuguese, "working" on the street, and a sick guy wandering around the prostitutes. The strange voyeur kidnaps a Brazilian travesty and brings him home without having sex, recalling William Wyler's "The Collector". In this part, there is an explicit frontal nudity of the homosexual in a very shocking and dramatic scene but never aggressive. Then the movie becomes cruel, and the identity of the abductor is disclosed and the story has a strong plot point, like in David Lynch's "Lost Highway". Although being very irregular, this last part also hooks the attention of the viewer until the very last scene. "Tiresia" is bizarre, impressive, intriguing and attractive, but recommended for very specific audiences only. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Tiresia"

A slender allegory of Greek mythology's blind sex-shifting seer Tiresias, Bertrand Bonello's film might be a lot more enjoyable if it didn't strive so hard to be art.Tiresia is a Brazilian transsexual prostitute living illegally in Paris who is kidnapped by a psychopath with poet pretensions.Deprived of hormones, he reverts to the masculine (a female actor plays Tiresia 'before' and a male 'after'), is capriciously blinded by his captor and left for dead in remote woods. Found by a quiet country girl, Tiresia recovers and becomes a local legend after apparently transforming into an oracle with the ability to see the future.Cutting between the two actors in the lead seems an unnecessary contrivance, but isn't as confusing as sinister Laurent Lucas playing both the abductor and the parish priest who later persecutes Tiresia (but as both have a fetish for roses, maybe they're meant to be the same person?).A largely glacial pace and inserted footage of roiling lava rivers with excerpts of Beethoven's 7th Symphony thundering on the soundtrack signal Bonello's push for profundity but it's still an intriguing film with plenty of ideas and themes to examine.

Other than good, bad or indifferent it's difficult to classify this one. Okay, it's based on a Myth so the director needs to find modern equivalents but this still leaves unanswered questions. Number one must be why Laurent Lucas picked this particular hooker to kidnap. There's no indication that they had met previously and by extension that Laurent would know Tiresia was a pre-op transsexual. Number two, why do none of her hooker colleagues come looking for her and/or report her missing; given the precarious nature of sex-with-strangers it's reasonable to suppose that hookers write down and/or memorise the numbers of the cars they and their colleagues get into. Number three, where does Lucas get his money? He appears to have no job yet lives in a large several storey house - albeit dilapidated - and drives a car without a visible source of income. To these can be added others such as what, if any symbolic meaning has the hedgehog in Laurent's garden which he is constantly feeding and why - other than the fact that it fits the original myth - does he opt to blind Tiresia rather than killing her outright or breaking say an arm or a leg. Then we can throw in why does Laurent double the role of a priest in the second half of the film. Though I kept watching til the end these and other questions punctuated the viewing throughout, not the best sign for a filmmaker whose objective surely is to make you forget you're watching a film.

Why did this film keep me up until 6 AM this morning?? Why is this film still playing over in my head? The plot(based on a Greek mythological tale) in itself is conceptually humanistic, and decidedly modern in its themes. The plot plays out in a modest tempo, allowing the viewer to soak it all in. The film has a multitude of richness. Something shines, something shocks, something frightens, something speaks, something is seen. One of the most interesting works of cinema I have seen in a number of years, Tiresia is a challenging, disturbing yet rewarding watch. The visual language is compelling(some scenes are staged to look like an oil painting painted by Velasquez taking a surrealistic turn, others look like sketches from a Dali nightmare) but the real heart of the film beats out of the sublime performances. Brave actors who put their bodies and soul on display. Parts of the film leave you feeling voyeuristic, like watching something you know you shouldn't be but can't turn away from. Highly Recommended for those who prefer a steak of a film to a bucket of stale popcorn.