Duet for Cannibals (1969, Susan Sontag) (Patreon)

58/100

Forever seemed on the verge of becoming great (right up to the final shot), never quite actually got there. Much of it plays like absurdist comedy stripped of overt humor, though there are occasional, extremely funny gags, as when Tomas hears a fight in progress—angry shouting, objects being smashed, etc.—but opens the door one second later to find Francesca calmly crocheting and her husband helpfully holding the yarn. Mostly, I just kept waiting for the consistently arresting power struggles and sexual gamesmanship to coalesce into a satisfyingly fucked-up worldview, which seemed as if it might finally be happening when Ingrid joins the household...but then that, too, wound up feeling strangely inchoate. For a celebrated writer's directorial debut, though, this sucker's damn assured. Sontag admittedly steals a lot from Godard—his penchant for employing music in short, discordant bursts that start and stop on a dime; the chalkboard conversation ("What could make me want to stay?" Tomas writes, to which Bauer scrawls in reply "A gun. A woman. An ideology")—but her compositional sense is classically elegant and she's cast all four of the key roles to absolute perfection. Adriana Asti and Lars Ekborg are both playing anti-human constructs (of very different sorts), carry them off with diabolical aplomb; Gösta Ekman and Agneta Ekmanner manage to sell their characters as levelheaded young people who nonetheless are susceptible to being baldly manipulated. (Sontag's most interesting approach to this latter aspect is her use of voiceover narration. Tomas and Ingrid occasionally speak to us directly, but always in oddly brief snatches that don't reveal their inner thoughts and barely qualify as expository. Creates the impression of a film with lots of crucial voiceover, almost of which has been pointedly excised.) Even if I can't honestly say that Duet for Cannibals "works," isolated moments are sure to stay with me: Bauer donning a false sparse beard for no reason, or Tomas trying to eat while Bauer loudly retches from the bathroom and Francesca insists that this is perfectly normal and should be ignored. The kind of ambitious failure I respect and will remember fondly.