WHAT? aka DIARY OF FORBIDDEN DREAMS aka CHE? (1972)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Sydne Rome is the Girl, a hippie hitchhiking through Italy. At the start of the film, she is practically raped by three guys and manages to escape to the nearest gorgeous villa. She arrives inside the villa, is given a room for free, and is mostly harrassed and defiled by a former pimp (Marcello Mastroianni). The pimp may be a homosexual and gets turned on when he dresses like a tiger and is whipped. This classy guy crushes golfballs with his feet, hates silence, and uses and abuses the Girl at every opportunity. This Girl is one unlucky chick. Her clothes are stolen by Mosquito (Roman Polanski), a drifter or some kind of bizarre character who lives with other misfits above her bedroom - he and his buddies spend their day having sex and playing ping-pong. Another character lives in one room whose only preoccupation is to play Mozart on the piano. Two women are always seen wearing hats and little else. Another man groans in his bedroom each time the Girl passes by. To perhaps remind herself she is not dreaming all this, the Girl writes absurd entries in her diary, which is under her arm at all times."What?" is certainly an appropriate title for this nondescript film.
"What?" is a black comedy with the distinctive silences and long takes that marked Polanski's brilliant "Cul-De-Sac." "What?" is not as ingratiating as "Cul-De-Sac," but it is as inspiring and as surreal as most of Roman's other works. It is almost classifiable as soft-porno, but it pokes fun at the genre, refusing to allow the lead actress Rome to indulge in much sex at all. Of course, through most of the film, she walks around nude, and even sits nude at the breakfast table. "Get out of here while you can from all this decadence," warns one character to Rome. She could have left at anytime if she were able to get some clothes on and hitch a ride back to civilization.
Every character treats Rome as a sexual object of desire, something to be enamored of because of her figure and her bubbly personality. Still, she allows herself to succumb to the pimp's desires, or the millionaire (Hugh Griffith) who asks her to remove her panties. Even the pianist sleeps on her crotch while she is asleep and, when awaken, is shocked that she feels violated. It is questionable if Rome's character loves the pimp, but he has perhaps made her feel whole again. There is no doubt that she has been changed by her experiences at the mansion.
"What?" was shown uncut in Europe and abroad, but was given the ax in a truncated version called "Diary of Forbidden Dreams" (cut from a 112 minute length to 94 minutes). I have never seen that version but I suspect American distributors had no idea what they had. "What?" never quite falls into any feasible category, and it is in fact too wild and exaggerated for mainstream tastes. But its surreal sexual situations and voyeuristic tension invariably hit home (and perhaps led to one of Polanski's later masterpieces such as "Bitter Moon"). Comical and sensual, often mesmerizing yet off-putting at times, "What?" is clearly one of the strangest film experiences I have ever had, and it bears Polanski's visual stamp all the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment