Ti West was taking us with X in the '70s dirty Texas with his gang of drunks throwing themselves into the shooting of a porn staring at the bloodbath. With Pearl, he amuses at prequel by casting again the awesome Mia Goth (also present at writing) dreaming of a cabaret dancer. Discovered in international competition NIFFFWhat's that bloody piece of film worth?
1918 or 2023?
The war is raging, the epidemic is eating up the country, xenophobia is reaching its peak... The starting point of this Pearl, located in 1918, obviously makes a foothold to our contemporary situation. Yet it is in an isolated farm in 20th century America that there is a trio of farmers of German origin: Pearl (Mia Goth), the daughter of a couple torn between an impotent father and a decisively cruel mother. And it's between hay boots, the rare cattle and this infested pond of alligators that Pearl starts dreaming of becoming a huge music-hall star.
Pearl, the film, is also the story of a triple confinement. A health lock-up (the Spanish flu pandemic and the risk of contagion), a social lock-up (the problem of being German in the first war) and a gender lock-up (Pearl is a woman and already suffers all the restrictions on her status as a woman). Hard to get out, and it's not his meeting with the charming projectionist (David Corenswet) of the cinema of its town which will raise it out of this triangle of difficulties.
A porn story
Indeed, if from a facade the young man could be a way out for Pearl – he defines himself as a bohemian, unattached – one realizes that his compliments are not much more than a bait towards his bed. A bed in the projection room, where Pearl will eventually land following a runaway from his native farm. The occasion for the projectionist to come out of his closets a little special film whose title will probably tell you nothing: A Free Ride. And for cause! This is the first real American porn movie.
Thus Ti West will enchasing the images of his own film and a very real projection of this porn produced clandestinely and shot under the coat (we let you take a look at the super number of Revus & corrected on Sex in Cinema) to initiate a double stake. On the one hand a clear parallel with X (here we see the beginning of the porn that will give birth, some 60 years later, at the beginning of the porn mainstream portrayed by the group of young deluges of X), on the other hand, the painting of the spell reserved for the (many) disappointed of the film dream. Many called, little elected, and the industry of X will have understood well by poking in this providential manna to fuel the rolling of its « stars » that she will use so quickly to give birth to others the next day. Something the projectionist understood and implied to Pearl that half-word...
History of rotting
The jaws of the trap close to Pearl, still a little more, and add to the fear of the disease that seems to shake society even more than the disease itself. A context – that of the Spanish flu – very practical for Ti West, since the film is shot in the middle of a pandemic of covid-19. Then only the dream, soon broken, and... madness? A toggle that runs the film through a hallucinating sequence of violence, indeed mounted mirror. A long rot – like the milk pig that is gradually being worked by the asticots – that will pass through the film from one side to the other, from the first bucolic, rural, saturated images of color, to finish on this anxiogenic generic fixed on a terrifying face.
First beautiful surprise in the international competition of this NIFFF 2023, and a nice diptych for Ti West that will sssort from a third part – MaXXXine – whose date of release is not yet known. Do not wait until (re)read the technical test X and to remake Ti West's filmo, accompanied by little unknown nuggets...
All right with you, the most beautiful scene in the movie is probably the hallucinated monologue. And this final choice that flirts with the genres where Mia Goth appears disfigured by her own dementia.
Too eager for the German 4K Ultra HD to let me find out! 🙂
Same! Seen in New York in AVP the atmosphere was great. Any preco link? 🙂
No preco yet... soon, soon! 😉
I'm staying out of a news from you. 🙂
I'm Turbine addict now 😉
[...] Whether it's X or Pearl, Ti West injects in his recent horrific productions a revival of the feminine yet modelled in the respective eras of his feature films. The proof, if necessary, that a rewriting of the screen-queens a little potiches of the 1980s was possible (and necessary!). Pearl's full review is here! [...]
[...] the coat and in the peep shows as Ti West will then represent it with an amused look in Pearl. In full effervescence, porn will now be entitled to its rising stars in the image of [...]
[...] from the slasher to the Tobe Hooper, the film again takes a different orientation from that of X and Pearl. In the wake of Dario Argento, Ti West delivers us a modern giallo pastiche. The murders [...]