Fluctuations

Obscure little film from a rather obscure director. It would be easy to dismiss this as the rubbish it possibly is but I found, increasingly as it went on, that it had a certain power. It reminds one of the early Warhol factory films and without dialogue, voice over or even much narrative structure this is at first intriguing, then rather infuriating but in the end almost poetic. In this short hour we see much dressing and undressing, even socks removed and even at the end a guy removing his trousers and then three pairs of pants before joining a young lady in the bath, who we have just enjoyed at Karate in stockings and suspenders. Meanwhile there is a statuesque nude lady perched upon the mantelpiece making love to herself in a giant ornate mirror. There is a little bondage, some whipping with a girls long hair, some peeing, some toe sucking and apart from the aforementioned sexy karate much more with two guys fighting throughout the film. Their grunts and yelps are used in the background of the sex scenes occasionally adding an odd element. Similarly there is a sex conversation between a young couple off screen whilst we see alternative action and this also lends the film a slightly off the wall feeling, not quite surrealist but headed that way. There are two or three naked on the floor at one point and we see their legs entwined and undulating on a fur rug. This is more a series of scenes shot in the making of a film than a finished film as such but well worth a watch.

Fluctuations (1970)

* (out of 4)

As the film opens a woman is reading a book called Voyeur and then we get into various vignettes dealing with sexual behavior.

FLUCTUATIONS is another film that was thankfully saved by Something Weird Video. While it's great a print of the film still exists and it was released, one shouldn't really get overly excited because the film itself is somewhat maddening and certainly not very good.

It's hard to make sense out of anything you're watching but I'm guessing all the sexual images that we're seeing are in the woman's mind as she reads the book. We get threesomes, foursomes, abuse, bondage, mild torture and a wide range of other sexual acts. None of it reaches the hardcore level but you certainly see a lot more details than you normally would in a softcore picture.

The editing style is beyond strange as is the cinematography. I'm going to guess that the director was trying to bring some Euroepeon style to the picture but it just doesn't work. The film gives you a headache watching it, it never makes any sense and worst of all is the fact that it just gets very annoying and very quickly.

Honestly, I would skip this one. The sex scenes are awkward and unerotic. The plot is pretty sporadic. While it does expose every angle of the female body, it's simply not worth it.

What on Earth is this?

This movie is quite simply indescribable, but I'm going to have a good try.

On the surface this is just another 1960s sleazy black and white soft core porn movie that 'Something Weird Video' seem to specialise in. But this is a total off-the-wall oddity! There is ABSOLUTELY no plot to speak of here. What we have is a series of sexual scenes that seem to have been filmed, then re-filmed with other actors who appear in the film, then cut up and pasted together with no sense of continuity. We see a progression of various sexual encounters; couple, threesome, foursome, lesbian, whipping, (light)bondage, but the scenes often jump and other actors from different scenes appear in the scene taking the place of a previous actor. There is a bizarre karate fight at the start of the film between two men....this then turns into a fight between a man and a woman. The actress is wearing no underwear and some of the shots are extremely explicit. There is no real soundtrack to the film....there are a few minutes of library vibraphone music near the start, but that soon ends and the soundtrack becomes a loop of a woman moaning with pleasure(and using expletives). Add to this the sound of the karate fight(which often appears over the top of sex scenes), a phone-sex conversation which goes on for a while(and is EXTREMELY graphic...which adds to the erotic power of the film), the sound of clumping feet, and various extracts of conversation and sexual conversations...none of which ever match what is happening on screen. The acting is really odd to. Some of the actors(for example,the couple who engage in the naked karate scuffle, and who later share a bath) seem to be enjoying the experience; others seem very blank and emotionless. Especially the bearded actor who seems completely unmoved, even during the sexual scenes.

It's very difficult to tell what this all about, and what exactly the film makers had in mind when they made this. If Dali and Bunuel had decided to make ''L'Age D'or'' as a porn movie, this is probably what it would have looked like. Despite it's amateurishness, the film has a hypnotic power that keeps you watching throughout it's short (69mins) running time....which is not something you can say about a lot of these type of movies.

I'd love to have been in the Times Square dirty-mac crowd when this turned up on screen.

I've given in 10 out of 10 purely because it's such a peculiar, one-off experience....and possibly a true example of pure cinema.