Archive of films Conspirators of Pleasure / Spiklenci slasti
Czech Republic
1997, 75 min
Section:
Tribute to Jan Švankmajer
Year: 2009
Six ordinary people we might meet daily on the street satisfy their sexual urges in private with the aid of unusual appliances, practices and rituals. They are lonely people, but they long for pleasure just like everybody else, including us. And they are capable of finding complex but highly original methods to attain it – for some of them with fatal consequences… A film with Jan Švankmajer’s typical hallmark which leaves us gasping for breath.
Synopsis
A bizarre black comedy, a psychological, erotic yet fascinating film with practically no dialogue, naturally with resourceful use of music, a manual on self-abuse, observations from de Sade and Freud, and something of a "recipe book of great ideas” – this is the essence of Jan Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure. Pure Švankmajer extravagance. Artistically, the film is extremely inventive and contains a wealth of possible and also apparently impossible devices; it is also an image of human solitude, the desire for the most perfect pleasure – and, indeed, the endeavour to communicate which, however, comes to nothing. Moreover, viewers receive instructions on how to construct unusual contraptions for use in intimate situations, for enhancing their sex life. The heroes of the film are a bunch of lonely people who – each in his or her own way – create an environment for their own erotic ends (not that one can speak of autoeroticism in this case, since they consort with appliances and objects which, in fact, replace potential partners). In addition to the truly original machines and rituals, the film features wonderful acting performances (Bára Hrzánová, Gabriela Wilhelmová, Anna Wetlinská, Pavel Nový, Petr Meissel, Jiří Lábus). Jan Švankmajer demonstrates that he is able to work equally well with a cast as with animation techniques. The stories and fates of the film’s main protagonists are interwoven, some of them die – are they happy or unhappy…? What certainly lingers on is the fascination with pleasure and all the possible ways to achieve it. The things those people are capable of doing in order to attain sexual gratification! Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure is, to a great extent, a film about us: everyone masturbates and whoever says he doesn’t, does it twice over… Have you ever denied doing it? Conspirators of Pleasure shows six ostensibly normal people undertaking abnormal practices. But then, what is normal and what isn’t?
Contacts
ATHANOR – společnost pro filmovou tvorbu, s.r.o.
U 5. baterie 21, 162 00, Praha 6
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 233 322 905
Fax: +420 224 313 383
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.athanor.cz
About the film
Color, 35 mm
Section: | Tribute to Jan Švankmajer |
---|---|
Director: | Jan Švankmajer |
Screenplay: | Jan Švankmajer |
Dir. of Photography: | Miloslav Špála |
Editor: | Marie Zemanová |
Producer: | Jaromír Kallista |
Production: | Athanor s.r.o. |
Cast: | Anna Wetlinská, Jiří Lábus, Pavel Nový, Gabriela Wilhelmová, Petr Meissel, Barbora Hrzánová |
Contact: | ATHANOR – společnost pro filmovou tvorbu, s.r.o. |
Distributor: | ATHANOR – společnost pro filmovou tvorbu, s.r.o. |
Guests
Jaromír Kallista
Producer
Jan Švankmajer
Film Director