Jan Švankmajer
Conspirators of Pleasure
Spiklenci slasti
CZ, CH, GB
1996, 85', nav dialogu
Age 16+

 

The most ordinary people among us and their extraordinary fetishes. One crafts a rooster costume to fantasise about revenge on a neighbour. The very same neighbour likes to think of herself as a sadomasochistic dominatrix. Meanwhile, the postwoman gathers tiny breadcrumbs, fashioning them into small balls. The newsstand owner harbours a wild attraction for the news moderator, while her husband polishes his flesh to a spotless shine after his shifts at the police station. In an incredible twist, the drives of six people begin to complement one another.

Švankmajer’s third full-length film immerses us in the Decameronian stories of Prague. At the centre is a man in search of stimulation, satisfaction, and pleasure. These are rituals, steeped in psychoanalytic theories of Buñuel, de Sade, Freud, Ernst, and others, that irritate the viewer’s senses. All this, enhanced with absurd animation and stop motion. By transforming the actors into “inanimate objects”, Švankmajer overcomes the challenges of modern communication in this phantasmagorical fairy tale. The film features no dialogue, allowing the trivial, the perverse, and the brutally honest to be revealed by way of pure action on screen.