Beyond marketing hyperbole, director "Martin Cognito" (long rumored as being an alias for French filmmaker Gaspard Noë of IRREVERSIBLE fame/infamy) could very well be the Great Innovator the French sex film industry has been pining for since the decline of its Golden Age. With only 3 movies (in the adult field anyway) under his belt, of which this is the first followed by the shockingly violent AXELLE and the sweetly subversive VIRGINIE, it has already become clear that he is preoccupied with concocting complete cinema experiences with thought-provoking story lines, superb production and good acting while never stinting on frequently very strong sex scenes which may not necessarily appeal to one's personally held erotic sensibilities. Recently, Cognito has actually been revealed as being former graphic designer and short film director Jean-François Chiron through documents pertaining to his 2006 mainstream endeavor EXES, which found their way into the hands of his estranged ex-wife's attorneys, as it turned out he had adopted the identity primarily to avoid alimony payments !
In the first installment of his unofficial trilogy, Cognito focuses on the enigmatic Claudine (an undisputed career performance by gorgeous Goth girl Ovidie) who leads a CRIMES OF PASSION type double life of stylist by day - for outré artists such as genre stalwart Alban Ceray purveying pornographic performance art for the jaded jet set - and whip-wielding dominatrix by night. When in the latter capacity she accidentally causes the death by drowning of a groveling submissive (Thibault), she involuntarily becomes the center of attention for police chief HPG (which is how the former Hervé Pierre Gustave seems to prefer being billed nowadays) who has a skeleton-stocked cupboard of his own. Matters grow continuously more disturbing when Claudine stumbles across a videotape among her victim's belongings, showing the events leading up to and bizarrely including Thibault's death ! Each time she watches the cassette it brings her bang up to date as to what's been going on in her life and offers tantalizing snippets of what's yet to come. As the tape starts to act as some sort of externalized conscience, Claudine slowly loses her grasp on reality, leading to the inevitable shocking conclusion which sees our anti-heroine collide with the snooping cop in an outburst of violence both sexual and psychological.
Borrowing one of the most unnerving elements of David Lynch's devastating LOST HIGHWAY (the videotape containing information that would be logically impossible), Cognito has drawn a fascinating portrait of a woman descending into madness, fortunately devoid of any overt heavy-handedness. Well aware that he is now working in the sex film field, he uses each encounter to tell and further the story, careful not to overly tax the dramatic capabilities of his cast. Standout in this respect is the breathtakingly angular Ovidie who, ironically, first caught my attention in Bertrand Bonello's non-genre film LE PORNOGRAPHE as the jaded seen-it-all done-it-all porn starlet who comes to embody Jean-Pierre Léaud's improbable ideal of love and purity. It was hard to judge her acting ability in that movie because she appeared typecast and was used primarily as an icon or symbol rather than a real person. CLAUDINE proves that she is every inch an actress and not just on porno terms either. Given little dialog throughout long stretches, she conveys a multitude of emotions by looks and glances, ranging from the cold aloofness she projects during her S&M sessions to warmth for what may be her single true friend (Alban) and outright hatred for the man (HPG) who forces her to confront...the truth ? What it ultimately all means is left dangling in the air for the viewer to decide. It may even vary on subsequent viewings. Like the works of David Lynch or Raul Ruiz, this film is a living, breathing organism, alternately beautiful and distressing yet never less than completely compelling. The photography by longtime cameraman François About (who shot many of the French porn classics for directors like Francis Leroi and Claude Bernard-Aubert) is some of the most sophisticated you'll ever see in adult features and the music by the pseudonymous "Georges Groçon" (another mainstream crossover) deserves a separate soundtrack release that fans will be delighted to learn is actually planned.
An additional word of praise must be directed at the French DVD release which contains both original and English language tracks plus English subtitles on most of the extras (save, strangely, the making-of). The interviews with Cognito (wearing a black hood to protect his identity !), Ovidie and HPG are nothing short of enlightening, revealing the eloquence and intelligence of all three plus a surprising as well as somewhat disheartening world weariness on HPG's part.
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