Lovely Rita

Jessica Hausner - 2001
This film could prove so important for me, for images that move across a screen.. it looks absolutely disgusting. Video is disgusting, it just looks crap, to modern eyes. Hausner doesn't seem to use artificial light, the colours of the wall make the faces, it just looks shit. It is quite remarkable. It is the anti-Murnau, this is at the moment my ground zero of illusion, the complete destruction of a cinema of poetry and illusion, of film stock in itself as artistic means. We have people in an ugly world, looking ugly. This is a film of pure destruction, almost Nietzschean, of glee, real twinkle-eyed wickedness in the destruction. I kept thinking of 'Filme Socialisme'. The actions are almost entirely stupid, pain inflicting; a brutal deconstruction of the everyday lie of this life, which is yet more positive than anything; for it posits, as a negative, a better world.
It is built largely, almost entirely, off quite close-ups and eyeline matches. Hitchcock yes, but I though more of Bresson (who would use video); no clear space, just physicality, the physicality of video, the feel of dirt, the blemishes on a face. Saying this, there are a few hints of the 'Lourdes' to come; a predeliction for slightly off-centered framing, and bright block colours on clear, nondescript backgrounds.
Hausner's editing is elliptical in the extreme; no shots to explain something, we just fly across. And each shot is so well judged. The nightclub scene; possibly the most disgusting sex scene ever, perfectly held for that duration.
I still can't quite cope with the zoom-ins here. But the idea is interesting. I agree with Pedro Costa that we have to tell Mr Panansonic to go fuck himself with the idea of throwing our digital cameras around, but pure stillness and artful playing with light is really just saying that you want to use film.
Video is the pure current of economics on art. Why does Hausner use video? Because she can't use film. But the video here is key to the art. Art as economics, real art I mean; and all real art is socialism; this is perfect.