Conspirators of Pleasure

Jan Svankmajer

Siren Visual

R4 DVD

Conspirators of Pleasure (Spilenci Slasti) is a very unusual film. It is a journey into the world of human sexuality and fetishism expressed through the medium of surrealism. It is the third film from this heralded Czech animator, puppeteer and artist and is an unusual break from his usual style. Svankmajer is best known for his use of claymation, marionettes, puppets and dolls and yet in Conspirators of Pleasure the emphasis is on real actors, though he uses animations and some artificial characters from about 45 minutes onward to explore how the characters perceive their own auto erotic world.

This is a film without dialogue, it uses six actors, each who is isolated from the world around them and fulfils their sexual and emotional needs through bizarre and unusual forms of auto-eroticism. These are not your traditional forms of fetishism; they are kinky in new and extreme ways. There is Mr. Peony, a man who dresses as a chicken and fantasizes about killing Mrs. Loubalova with a large rock and Mrs. Loubalova, who fantasizes about dominating Mr. Peony through enforced submission and drowning him. We also have a policeman who steals all manner of goods (condoms, nails, paddles, buckets etc) and creates sex toys to stimulate himself. There is also Mr. Kula who is in love with a news reader and turns his television into a robotic masturbation device. At the same time we also have Mrs. Beltinska, the news reader who uses fish to suck her toes and Mrs. Malkova, the post woman who roles bread into small balls and puts them in her ears, nose and throat !

The fetishes are superbly presented, we see Mr. Peony ask his neighbour to slaughter a chicken. He cooks it, keeps it blood and uses the carcass as a model to construct a papier-mache chicken head from torn-up pornographic photos. The outfit is remarkably bizarre – he even fashions bird like wings out of umbrellas he has cut up. He then makes a doll in the form of Mrs. Loubalova and takes it out into the countryside where he takes the form of a predator chicken which attacks her and kills her in some sort of sado-masochistic rite.

Mrs. Loubalova has a similar lust for Mr. Peony, however, she plays it out a bit differently. She uses an abandoned Church where she dresses in bondage gear and whips and degrades Mr. Peony until she finally drowns him to satisfy her cravings.

All of these characters begin the film as separate individuals but slowly we see how their various lives interconnect and how their fetishes feed each other. The perspective of the film also moves from an “objective” view of each of the fetishists, to seeing it through their eyes. This is where Svankmajer's animations come in, the dolls made by Peony and Loubalova come to life and we “experience” their fetish world as though it is real. Mr.Peony flying around like a predator chicken is suitably weird.

The climax of the film is intriguing as we slowly see the fetishes move from being isolated private experiences, to interacting with others (with the fetishes interchanging between the participants) to becoming real. The final scene is where Mrs. Loubalova is found dead, killed by a huge stone which has crashed through her roof – one identical to Mr.Peony’s dramatic fantasy.

The production values of the film are certainly different. There is no dialogue and the soundtrack is unusual. The emphasis is placed on using isolated pieces of music for effect intermixed with deliberately focused sound effects. There is no overarching musical score. The effect of this is to bring our attention to each sound and musical piece and these are used for very specific purposes. For example, when Mrs. Loubalova kills Mr.Peony’s chicken and he sits below her collecting the blood, the music is religious and emphasizes the quasi-communion like nature of the scene. While Mrs. Malkova’s strange bread fetish is accompanied by Indian music and a white light to emphasize its quasi yogic significance. There are also regular sounds which are used in highly eroticized manners such as eating, drinking etc.

The same emphasis is placed on the use of everyday objects, tubes of glues, brushes, tools – all become eroticized. A prime example is when Mr.Peony is looking at an adult magazine and making a drink for himself, it “fizzes” over and covers the page with white splotches and leaves it wet – a superbly explicit image, yet one created with a drink !

Svankmajer claims his influences in this film were Sigmund Freud, Max Ernst, Luis Bunuel and the Marquis de Sade and hence the focus is on the perversity of everyday life. He shows people who are average and normal on the outside, such as a policeman, newsreader, postman and a newspaper seller etc. And yet these same individuals, isolated from others, create elaborate and frenzied sexual fantasies for themselves. While they do not recognize each other, each being suspicious of other human beings and especially those around them, they are all connected and moreover, each have an effect on each other. In the end this effect turns deadly.

This is a very unusual film, beautifully filmed, uniquely creative in its use of animation, sound, symbols and images. The characters are superbly developed and the way in which its mixture of sexuality and fetish are utilized to create a scathing satire about everyday life is truly astounding.

This review will appear in Volume 2 No.2 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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