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Cremaster 5

1997, Movie, NR, 54 mins

Cremaster 5: Review

CREMASTER 5
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Named after the muscle that raises and lowers the testes, this latest installment in artist Matthew Barney's nonsequential Cremaster series is a visually dazzling, thematically opaque jewel. With original music by Jonathan Bepler and a Hungarian libretto by Barney himself, it's really more a lavishly mounted, three-act mini-opera than a conventional feature film. The Queen of Chain (primeval Bond girl Ursula Andress), dressed in elaborate Elizabethan mourning dress topped off by a blown-glass headpiece, is escorted into the empty Budapest Opera House by her twin pages (Joanne and Susan Rha). Seated on a quilted, pink satin tuffet, she sings a mournful aria while watching the solitary Diva (Barney) scale the proscenium arch. Meanwhile, the Queen's lover, the Magician (Barney, again), is perched nude on the city's Chain Bridge, bound a la Houdini and about to throw himself into the Danube. Frolicking in a cavernous mosaic bath directly under the Queen's seat are water sprites, who tie Jacobin pigeons to the strange genitalia of the Giant (Barney, yet again), a Neptunian creature with skin the color of pink marble. At the finale, nearly everyone dies. Any questions? Like any true work of high decadence, Barney's film is drowsy with a mesmerizing sensuousness and glittering artifice -- crimson satins, swirling opalescent baubles, ruffs made of lilies. It's certainly precious and not a little obtuse, but Barney seems to know exactly what's going on and it's easy to get swept up in the bizarre proceedings. This exquisite film may have you scratching your head, but it will also leave you rubbing your eyes. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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