IV. Criminal Gestures

and Transformations

Brice Dellsperger’s Body Double (X), Abel Ferrara’s Ms .45, Marleen Gorris’s A Question of Silence and Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer.

Office Killer

Sunday 11 May, 17:00 | Tate Modern | Duration: 95'

In her first feature film direction to date, American artist Cindy Sherman concocts a peculiarly funny caricature of psycho-thriller and horror genres. The film follows the transformation of the “pathetic” office mouse Dorine into an unruly predator, a femme-fatale-gone-wrong. Having stirred up criminal chaos, Dorine finds much pleasure in fashioning a grisly tableau of her bitchy colleagues in a dark basement, upping the stakes in Sherman’s trademark portrayal of perversity.

A Question of Silence (De Stilte rond Christine M.)

Thursday 22 May, 18:30 | ICA Cinema | Duration: 92'

Bags, shoes, hangers and clothes rails are transformed from innocuous accessories and boutique equipment into deadly weapons in Marleen Gorris’s feature film debut A Question of Silence. Three women, all strangers to each other, cross paths in a boutique when a relatively trivial shoplifting incident unleashes their suppressed frustrations. Winner of two prestigious awards, The Golden Calf and Grand Prix (both 1982), A Question of Silence has since been referred to as a landmark feminist work.

Ms. 45

Thursday 22 May, 20:45 | ICA Cinema | Duration: 80'

A violent retribution drama in which a shy seamstress is brutally raped twice in the same day and transformed into a killer, shooting men with her .45 pistol. The transformation of the heroine is marked by the change of her style and dress, from dowdy to a sleek, cat-like vamp who wears bright red lipstick and killer boots. The film climaxes in a scene at a fancy dress party in which the character dresses as a nun in suspenders, drawing together her transformation from virgin to a murderous femme fatale.

Body Double (X)

Friday 23 May, 20:30 | ICA Cinema | Duration: 102'

The French artist Brice Dellsperger’s Body Double (X) is a brilliant 21st century reconstruction of the torrid 1974 film L’important c'est d'aimer by Andrzej Zulawski. Mouthing the 1974 soundtrack and appearing in various costumes, drag artist Jean-Luc Verna acts out all of the roles within a cut up and fragmenting, digitalized visual narrative.

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