Doea anyone know if the topic of the film has any real scientific background, or if Claire Denis was inspired (for want of a better word) by anything that has happened like this in real life? The film is very vague about the experiment and the condition of Core, so it's all probably ficticious but I am curious all the same.
A very very striking and undderrated film.
**SPOILERS**
I can imagine that this portrait of Vlad Tepes (the "real" Dracula) might have inspired the casting of Vincent Gallo…:
http://www.draculas.info/_img/gallery/portret_of_vlad_the_impaler_2.jp g
The divinity laughed.
That's the first thing I thought when I saw him-- "Man, this guy looks like Vlad the Impaler."
That, or Julian Barratt. Okay, no.
---
Observe: This girl is about to be beaten with sticks. She has offended you, surely.
People I know were left with two questions after watching this film. Why did the victims not struggle when they were being mauled to death? What is the drug that they take?
I think the scenes with the doctors may be a pun on the fact that in films of this nature a mad scientist appears and gives a quick explication of why everyone is going *beep* This did not happen.
However, in the background of some of these scenes you see photos of the plant life they were working with. One photo shows that the plants with the dominant, on top, position seem to feed off the plants that are below them. Making the lower plants wither and die.
The scene where the main character jizzes in the bathroom shows that his cum has a sap-like texture. Therefore the substance he has taken may replicate some of the attributes of the plants they were studying/using.
Now, in the scene with the black doctor and Dalle he is happy to kiss her when he is over her but when she flips him over, or tries to, he quickly stops kissing her and gets her medication. Perhaps aware that once she gets on top of him her body will excrete a substance that briefly paralyses him, or at least prevents him from moving her. Once on top she can then, as was the case with the plants, begin the process of taking his strength, blood, from him.
That is why there is no struggle, that is why, possibly in both cases, the drug has such an effect.
He lived, he worked, he died
i'm kind of surprised that no one has mentioned the most obvious inspiration-- rosemary's baby. if you look shane's wife (julie i think) is dressed-- unlike the rest of the cast-- in 60's ish clothes and has a mia farrowesque pixie cut. like RB, it involves a newly married couple, and if none of this is enough for you-- the casting of gallo-- best known as the actor/director of buffalo '66-- should be the most obvious reference. mia farrow's hubby in RB was actor/director john cassavetes.
to me this sort of felt like a funny horror groundhog's day, where on day one the wife got pregnant with satan's baby, on tuesday she got married to a vampire/cannibals, on weds... poor thing gets a (different) trouble every day.
in another thread someone called it a tone poem-- i had that same thought watching the movie.
That's pretty interesting, I never noticed those details (or came up with those theories)! Thanks for this. The paralysis of the victims always bothered me; it seemed like a signal that the scene was "really" standing for something else by making it unrealistic, but a simple medical explanation never occurred to me. That the first bite would stun the victim, or something along those lines, makes perfect sense.
share