FFWD Weekly
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Video by FFWD Staff Less a psychological thriller than a psychoanalytical one, Genealogies of a Crime (France, 1997) features Catherine Deneuve in dual roles, as both a criminal defence lawyer and also, in flashback, as the woman allegedly murdered by the lawyer’s latest client. Consider also that the murder victim is the client’s aunt and maternal influence, and that the young client closely resembles the lawyer’s recently deceased teenaged son, and suddenly this is a film rife with identity crises, role reversals and conflated characters. Add to this already convoluted narrative a pair of rival psychologists, one of whom was treating the victim with a controversial therapy at the time of her death, and the story becomes almost indecipherably confusing. Somehow, acclaimed, Chilean-born, avant-garde filmmaker Raul Ruiz nearly directs his way out of this mess. Along the way, he manages to compellingly explore themes of identity, madness and even the old philosophical bugbears of free will and determinism, but he’s ultimately mired in his infuriatingly elaborate plot. Apparently, Genealogies of a Crime is based on a very bizarre true crime story. Nevertheless, a background in 17th century philosophy (there are characters named after both René Descartes and Blaise Pascal), as well as a thorough understanding of modern and contemporary psychoanalysis, might make the film seem more intriguingly complex rather than merely muddled and obtuse. Now, if narrative cinema has grown too confused or, as is more often the case, just plain boring, better have a look at Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudi. It’s a 1984 documentary, newly available on video, offering a comprehensive cinematic exploration of the major works of Barcelona’s most famous architect. Without the intrusiveness of narration or commentary, Teshigahara’s camera floats and glides, cranes and dollies, over and around Gaudi’s façades, interiors, sculptures, mosaics and fountains. The visuals revel in the enchanting contoured beauty of these fantastic, organic structures as Toru Takemitsu’s alternately eerie and playful score draws the viewer toward a deeper understanding of Gaudi’s eccentric imagination. In the latter part of the last century and the early part of this one, Gaudi designed and constructed some of Barcelona’s weirdest and most well known monuments and landmarks. Edifices at once despised and admired by the city’s inhabitants, labeled by turns modernist and neo-gothic, lunatic and genius, Gaudi’s works are still virtually unclassifiable, as they belong to no one particular artistic or architectural movement. This film provides an impressively atmospheric introduction to Gaudi, and everything here is shown in vivid, polychromatic glory. There’s the elevated Guell Park, and its curving mosaic bench, replete with Sunday afternoon revelers, including the one little girl who roller-skates fluidly around the park’s columnar supports. Next we have the strange, dragon-like Casa Mila, with its scaly shingles and bony façade. Finally, here are the intimidating spires of the Temple of the Sagrada Familia; Gaudi devoted 43 years of his life to the construction of this immense cathedral, but to this day it looms, unfinished, over Barcelona. An irascible iconoclast, Gaudi’s influence on other artists of this century is undeniable. He is often held to be the original Surrealist, championed by Salvador Dali and revered by hundreds more. Certainly, this documentary is worth at least one viewing, if only to witness the sculpted steel Dragon Gate at the Palau Guell and the spiny spiral staircase at Casa Mila, and then to wonder just how great a debt one of cinema’s most terrifying monsters, H.R. Giger’s alien, owes to this unparalleled master.

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