Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Film / Sex Bijou: The Missing Link between Kenneth Anger and David Lynch?
Posted by Michael Joshua Rowin on Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 10:49 AM
When our unnamed hero eventually visits Bijou he confronts, in a series of mirrored, darkened rooms, his own desires and his starring role in a porno that slowly evolves into an elaborate orgy replete with sensual, kaleidoscopic lighting, large perspective-diminishing genital sculptures, and a host of other fit young homosexuals. Made at the height of the mainstream theatrical pornographic film (Deep Throat was also, er, released in 1972), gay porn trailblazer Wakefield Poole's sophomore effort after Boys in the Sand is appropriately "artistic" for its time and well beyond it, more sexual odyssey than straightforward fuck flick and the missing link, perhaps, between Kenneth Anger's Fireworks and David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. After watching Bijou even non-homosexuals will long for dreamier portrayals of the shadowy yet rapturous unknown of sexual exploration; all will definitely pine for the limitless possibilities afforded by a now ancient, grimy NYC captured here in almost documentary rawness.
The poet Eileen Myles introduces a screening of Bijou tonight at Light Industry.
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