A real “aficionado” of the Locarno Film Festival, where he’s presented many of his films, including After Blue [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] in competition, French director Bertrand Mandico is returning with his latest surprising work, Dragon Dilatation [+lee también:
entrevista: Bertrand Mandico
ficha de la película] (presented Out of Competition). A combination of two film essays - Petrouchka and La Déviante Comédie - Dragon Dilatation is - like all of Mandico’s movies – a bewildering, erotic-decadent and always incredibly poetic journey into fluid worlds (in all senses of the term), where reality as we know it crumbles away before eventually tumbling down. Free from all earthly obligations, this reality metamorphoses to the point of climax, giving birth to hybrid characters who are part-human and part-animal and who wind their way under our skin. Dragon Dilatation confronts the audience with the magic of cinema, it destabilises viewers’ habits, urging them to enjoy an artistic experience which will stay with them long after the final curtain falls.

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Divided into two parts - the first entitled Petrouchka and consisting of a re-reading of Stravinsky’s ballet, and the second, La Déviante Comédie, composed of footage of rehearsals for a show of the same name, which Mandico was supposed to stage at the Théâtre des Amandiers - Dragon Dilatation is an experimental cinematographic work which masterfully combines poetry and decadence, formal elegance and underground roughness. Shot in a split-screen format, as if wanting to remind us that there isn’t just one reality but many, elusive and intentionally ambiguous realities, Dragon Dilatation brings two worlds together: the more dreamlike and acidic world of Petrouchka and the erotic-political provocative universe of La Déviante Comédie, which is a kind of queer Divine Comedy where a dog from Hell going by the name of Rainer (in honour of Fassbinder), played by the wonderful Elina Löwensohn, urges the characters to embark on extreme adventures which lead them to experience some kind of underground ecstasy. As the director explains, the film’s two parts were created independently and then combined at a later date, giving rise to a brutal but tantalising encounter between elegance and provocation. The poetry of Petrouchka, a first part whose music imposes itself and overflows like a swollen river, combines beautifully with the film’s second, more punkish section, which is full of unapologetically queer eroticism. The character of Conann (Claire Duburcq) – like a lesbian version of Thor who’s reminiscent of Peaches’ magnetic madness - is unforgettable in this sense, as is the dog, Rainer whose face is covered by a grotesque mask and who urges the characters to experiment with sensuality based exclusively on desire.

What’s especially striking and fascinating about the characters is their ambiguity and ambivalence. Their faces and bodies change and metamorphose unashamedly, mocking gender binarism and the labels which society tends to attach to bodies, treating them like commodities.

Although its presence is far more noticeable in the first half, music endows both parts of the film with an extra layer of magic. In La Déviante Comédie, however, this magic turns into a queer manifesto inciting rebellion, a kind of truth serum which forces the audience to face up to its fears and limitations. Petrouchka (Clara Benador) is also incredibly magnetic as a kind of “heroin chic”, Bolshoi Theatre ballerina who transforms before our very eyes into a puppet, who’s at the mercy of a one-eyed fashion designer reminiscent of Madonna in her Madame X era (the irresistible Nathalie Richard). In short, Dragon Dilatation is a destabilising film which turns cinema into an artistic performance where bodies break free from social constraints.

Dragon Dilatation was produced by Orphée Films in co-production with Venin Films, Ecce Films and Nanterre-Amandiers Centre Dramatique Nationale. Kinology are managing international sales.