In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (Pierre Clémenti, 1986) (Patreon)

BY REQUEST: AR

-Basements were recently my thing. Do you know what I found? I swear I'll propose only good things. I see wooden boxes. Do you know what was inside?

-Corpses?

-Electric saws!

A true oddity, In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal is an "underground film," much more so than an experimental one. It's not just that Blue Rascal is nominally a narrative film, although that does factor in. One would have to delve into the darker corners of French cinema history to find work that has meaningful connections to Clémenti's film, although they certainly exist. F.J. Ossang comes to mind, and to a much lesser extent, Paul Vecchiali. On the other hand, Blue Rascal bears strong resemblance to the grungier, more forcefully transgressive elements in North American film history. The New York downtown scene (James Nares, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell), the queer avant-garde (Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Bruce LaBruce), and the 80s Punk directors (Beth and Scott B, Nick Zedd, Richard Kern) are all fairly clear touchstones for Clémenti's sensibility.

I sail quietly across my physical desert. I don't bleed anymore, I run away. I loved a star that had never been in heaven. Does it really exist? Never mind. Sometimes digging out my dead, my drowned, I can hear it groan inside a grave.

At the same time, there is a Continental element to Blue Rascal that suggests that, as a director, Clémenti had been taking mental notes from the top-tier filmmakers for whom he acted: Pasolini, Buñuel, Garrel, Glauber Rocha, and Makavejev. (He never worked with Fassbinder, but his influence is undeniable.) Like those political modernists, Clémenti has a counter-hegemonic worldview, but utterly subsumes it within a cinematic language all his own. On Twitter I said that Blue Rascal reminded me of a Jack Smith rendition of Alphaville, but I also remarked that the comparison was wholly inadequate. That's because Clémenti's film is more notable for what it doesn't do, the conventions that it completely ignores.

The story of Blue Rascal, such as it is, combines noir and sci-fi elements, but commits to neither. An authoritarian regime, the Gang, controlled by Captain / Doctor Speed (Jean-Pierre Kaif) and General Nutsbody (Clémenti), are drug-runners, and apparently a large amount of heroin has been hijacked by a rebel faction, led by Hassan (Hechmi Ghachem, who also scripted), referred to repeatedly as "the sexual Arab." Members of Hassan's group are kidnapped and killed by the Gang. Meanwhile, Hassan engages in sex-murder, fucking and then killing various women. The implication is that the sexuality (and not, say, Hassan's knife) results in their deaths. But even if you're trying to keep score, as I was, you won't discover a clear explanation for anything.

Blue Rascal is shot in lurid color, suggesting Ektachrome that's been heavily pushed in low-light conditions. There is no sync sound; a nonstop narration, with bits of dialogue, chugs along with a grinding noise-and-percussion soundtrack. Many scenes include superimpositions, either of previous scenes or of contemporary news footage (Reagan, the Iranian Revolution). And, once we are about 40 minutes in, Clémenti starts introducing chapter headings, displayed in stark white-on-red text, like the old New Yorker Films logo.

You are mad love. A dreadful love came up to me in the paleness of the city. A monstrous light, lying where you were, on the same floor, in the same cell, under the same light, undid the fly of my brain, woke up my long-asleep sex between the jelly-like walls of my cerebellum.

Characters have names like Mutt-the-Toad, Sim-the-Murderer, and, as the heroin-addicted sex worker, Seringue (Nadine Herman-Clémenti). Steve Erickson nails both the atmosphere and the textual underpinning of Blue Rascal when he calls the film the "best William Burroughs adaptation ever." From its cut-up, staccato rhythms to its fascination with all things louche, gory, and perverse, In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal remains on the verge of falling apart. But Clémenti holds it all together with cum, spit, and attitude.