Liberté

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.

2 hours of watching depraved perverts in bad wigs having sex in the woods. That's it. That's the movie. Repulsive.

'Liberté' is an arthouse film that's meant to provoke and perhaps even shock. It's about desire taken to the extreme, beyond the niceties of society and reason. It features a group of people of different social classes and ages, who surrender themselves in the darkness of the forest to pleasure and pain, concepts that become indistinguishable from one another. The story, if one may call it that, starts with naughty insinuations and escalates into an all out sadomasochistic extravaganza. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it doesn't deserve the low rating that it has received so far on IMDb.

Then again, Catalan director Albert Serra never meant to please the audience. He cheekily claims to have been upset by the warm reception of his previous film, the somewhat more accessible 'The Death of Louis XIV'. So he tried to redeem himself this time around by creating something less palatable. He complains that today, most films are made only to gratify the audience and that self-censorship keeps artists from saying anything that may be regarded as too dark, too ambiguous or too offensive for the collective. Fiction is supposed to "break taboos" and show "what's worst about human beings, as a form of catharsis. That's how Greek tragedy was born," he explains in an interview.

The title can be interpreted as ironic, as this absolute "liberty" that the protagonists engage in seems like madness and it isn't clear to what degree they actually enjoy it. Emotion here is expressed with animalistic grunts and sometimes agonizing screams. What I think is important is that it's all done consensually. All the participants voluntarily submit to this strange ritual and share an unspoken moral code. When one of the characters keeps asking for more whipping than he can physically take, the others deny it to him, as if they thought that he was being too greedy. The director believes that "in order to have a true communion between bodies" one must give up the sense of individuality and devote oneself to giving and not only receiving pleasure. What I found most interesting is that beyond a certain point, as the director puts it, "it ceases to matter whether the other person is tall or short, thin or corpulent, young or old, beautiful or ugly." Desire can level the field between "masters and servants, the rich and poor, the handsome and ugly, men and women..." At least in this picture, it seems to reduce human culture to very basic primitive needs, in a way that is egalitarian. There's something grotesque about the imagery in the film, yet at the same time, it looks like these libertines in the forest may be on to something.

"'Liberté'", Serra offers, "is a poem about the logic of the night, unproductive and sterile." Indeed, what is lacking in this deranged orgy is any hint of tenderness, of caring, or constructive contemplation. There is only desperate, burning desire and chaos. There is no trace of the Apollonian and the Dionysiac reigns supreme.

"Liberté" could be viewed as a celebration of artistic freedom. I'm thankful that we live in an era in which someone like Serra can dream up a beautiful nightmare like this, and that at least in some countries, we can view it in cinemas and later comment on it on IMDb.

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.

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.