It’s time to reconnect with the girl with the breast earring: Peaches, a singer and performer best known for albums like Fatherfucker and Impeach My Bush. You could say she has been a bit forgotten, but that’s not exactly true any more – just a few months ago, at the Berlinale, another doc, Teaches of Peaches [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Philipp Fussenegger, Judy …
fiche film] by Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer, focused on her career as well. There was also a wild master class which saw Peaches running around happily in outrageous costumes, mostly made out of hair. Hell – if anyone deserves two docs within one year, it’s her.

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At the height of her fame, Peaches felt revolutionary – to this writer, but also to many others. She talked about sexual fluidity in her songs, pleasure and acceptance, always through fun, naughty lyrics, but never preaching. Now, years later, she hasn’t changed. Staring at the camera in Peaches Goes Bananas [+lire aussi :
interview : Marie Losier
fiche film] – shown in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori – she announces that “extra tongue is extra fun” and as for “vaginoplasty, I keep it nasty”. That’s the very first scene, baby.  

Marie Losier, who has been following her for many years, clearly enjoys all the shenanigans on stage. All the vagina hats, twerking dancers in their nude-effect undies, people shaking whatever it is she’s asking them to shake (mostly during “Shake Yer Dix”, still very much a bop). Then things calm down: Peaches the performer turns into Peaches the sister, Peaches the partner. It would be so easy to just focus on the wild side of her – I mean, it’s right there, fake tits and clits constantly floating above the crowd. But Losier also looks for quieter, more tender moments. She finds them.

These two sides don’t always gel in the film – probably because there’s something experimental in the way she shoots these gigs, adding to the visual overload – but there are plenty of touching scenes: Peaches’ playful relationship with her ailing sister Suri, very into lip-syncing, and stories about supportive parents coming to early shows even when there was barely anyone else. One wonders if Losier was trying to make Peaches more approachable in her doc, as “likeable” doesn’t seem like a word anyone would really care for here. If that’s the case, she succeeds: there is something endearing about listening to this out-of-control musician rave about cheese plates. Repeatedly.

Still, Peaches Goes Bananas ends up as a tale about the body. Can you do the same things as you age? Can you dress the same, can you wear your hair the same way? According to the messages people are bombarded with, you can’t. “Cut your hair, cover your knees and don’t even get us started on those embarrassing arms.” Well, they should take a look at this doc then, with Peaches trying to “make ageing cool” the only way she knows how: by posing in a see-through bra, with her hair bleached and neatly shaved on the sides.

“People say I make them feel good about their own body,” she says here, laughing about the backhanded compliment, but it’s easy to see what they mean. There’s no sucking in your stomach, no looking for the most flattering pose – just a woman happy to be alive, to be creative and, yes, to be getting another cheese plate. It’s an image worth much more than all those Venice red-carpet snaps. It’s true – it makes you feel good.

Peaches Goes Bananas is a French-Belgian production staged by Tamara Films and Michigan Films, and its international sales are overseen by Best Friend Forever.