Liberté

I can understand what the director attempted to do with such a film but the end product is a disaster. Disturbing scenes throughout the film which were shot just for the sake of disturbing the audience without any artistic basis. There are scenes where you watch a tree for five minutes. Acting was awful as well. It was dead boring.

After having been drawn in by the first 15 minutes, I was disappointed to find that the rest of the film was a banal, bland, sans-erotic orgy. It's worth watching for about 45 minutes as the filming techniques are compelling; Serra captures the feeling of midnight cruising like no one else. I constantly found myself challenged by the play of shadows and body. 5 stars for technique.

Albert Serra's "Liberte"(2019)is art for the sake of art. The film is meticulously paced and shot to create a "Peeping Tom" effect. The storyline is based on a play written by Serra and the film follows the format of a play. Immediately it is thus not everyone's cup of tea. The theme, which focus on high brow libertarians who who effectively ex-communicated by Louis XVI and who enjoys a night of debauchery also will not find favour with most audiences. That said Serra has a unique way of making light of famous works of the era, most notably those of the Marquis de Sade, and the film never feels heavy or for that matter pornographic (this despite some visuals which will not sit well with the Bible schools). The film is more about a bit of a chuckle than anything else and works rather well. 8/10.

The director promised to explain his film in a Q&A that was supposed to follow the screening. We left early. Even the slow traffic in the streets seemed more interesting than what we had just witnessed. I can explain traffic. People are going from A to B. That's more interesting. Believe me.

The film somehow tries to make a reflection about pleasure, pain and its popular acceptance, but it fails to do so: dialogues are vague, weak and unmeaningful, and the action simply portrays a series not-mainstream sex scenes (i.e. anus eating and peeing) aimed to provoke an uneasy feeling to the untrained spectator. On the other hand, the lightning, costumes and make up were good, but not enough to watch it again. Nonetheless, it's always an interesting experience to be confronted to these kind of films, it may turn out well for you!