[TrueFaith77]

57.The Affairs of Lidia (Bruce LaBruce); grade: B
60.My Son Hunter (Robert Davi); grade: B+
61.Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Ostlund); grade: F
62.Stars at Noon (Claire Denis); grade: D

Two filmmakers in disreputable movie markets (one a sexual libertine, the other a political Conservative) both turn to Brechtian techniques to explore how contemporary politics alienate people from themselves and each other. In other words, aesthetic distance proves the route to compassion, in contrast to the bourgeois cretinism and condescending projection of two Cannes-feted arthouse films.

The Affairs of Lidia (Bruce LaBruce)
LaBruce designs this fashion-world bisexual hardcore porn to appeal to the swinger set (the mise-en-scene recalls Kershner’s The Eyes of Laura Mars). Doing so, LaBruce takes advantage of the mechanical nature of the genre (complete with a nod to Resnais’s magnificent Guerre Est Finie) through aesthetic innovation. He deconstructs the characters’ woke political poses to challenge them with the implications of radically open sexual relationships. The grieved party of the film’s sexual la ronde (Sean Ford) chastises Lidia (Skye Blue), explaining that through her existential “shallowness,” she personifies—she IS—Fashion. He exclaims: “And I LOVE fashion.” LaBruce develops an entirely new visual trope—existential AND semiotic—worthy of Kershner and Resnais: through split screens and montage, characters change or juxtapose different clothing within each sequence. It’s a dazzling extension of the profound Parent Trap montage in LaBruce’s masterpiece Saint-Narcisse.

My Son Hunter (Robert Davi)
Muckracking cinema takes on unexpected empathetic dimensions through the sensibilities of its auteurs. Actor-turned-director Davi knows the debaucherous reality of both Hollywood and D.C.—both of the elite and the exploited climbers. Reminiscent of his participation in Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, Davi extends that understanding to satire. Both films dramatize a whore’s redemption—liberation—through righteous political action—and then, even better, familial reconciliation that gets to the heart of the national divide. The journalistic rigor of producers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney complements Davi’s low-down industry-town knowledge and, then, transcends it, because McElhinney borders on genius with her understanding of what truly matters in life. Davi visualizes the tragically perverted relationship of Hunter Biden with his father Joe Biden. He stages the Oedipal dialogue about their Ukranian-Russian kickback scheme against the backdrop of the most influential and still-unsurpassed sequence in movie history: the Ukraine-set Odessa steps massacre from Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet-era Battleship Potemkin. Provincial politics—like family dynamics and personal corruption—take on unfathomable geopolitical consequences. Still, the most ingenious Brechtian trope is Laurence Fox’s hilarious and heartbreaking portrayal of Hunter. Imagine Mike Leigh directing Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Ostlund)
Phony in every way. Example: It implausibly portrays a long-in-the-tooth male model (Harris Dickinson) as naive about sexual exploitation in the industry (LaBruce and Davi know better!). It’s misogynist, classist, racist: a Mexican cleaning lady turns tyrant on a deserted island. She sexually exploits the male model. She murders his model girlfriend. She connives to keep the survivors of a yacht explosion under her thumb. In other words, she ends up just like the film’s rich white men—a mere projection of the filmmaker’s and the art-film audience’s own murderous power-lust.

Stars at Noon (Claire Denis)
The affair between a journalist-turned-prostitute (ha!) (Margaret Qualley) and a British secret agent (Joe Alwyn) trapped in Nicaragua amid a regional war and global proxy war should provide the opportunity for sexual exploration—two sexy actors exposing character depth and skin. (Alwyn smoldered in Ang Lee’s great Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.) Instead, we get the perceptual reality of Alwyn’s contract limiting nudity and, that cliche shorthand for hetero intimacy, the gross-out of Alwyn using Qualley’s menstrual blood for finger lube (again, LaBruce and Davi know better!). Two American CIA agents (Danny Ramirez and Benny Safdie) test this intimacy—Qualley’s fidelity—by offering her freedom in exchange for her betrayal of Alwyn. The film’s only dynamic visual vector is Qualley’s penchant for sudden outbursts directed at the camera—white fecklessness as existential privilege.