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Desire divided, cruelty dissected. The composition is dense and incomplete, an isosceles triangle with an unseen side or two—the rumpled mattress is given a Cézanne angle to fill the screen, on it lounge Factory chiclet Edie Sedgwick in leopard-print undies and half-awake doofus Gino Piserchio in boxers. To the right of the frame, out of camera range but charging the air with his passive-aggressive litany, is ex-beau Chuck Wein. "Not just another pretty face," the Poor Little Rich Pixie on the mound of pillows, facing druggy pawing from one fellow and inquisitive jabbing from another, determined to conduct the image around her only to threaten to vanish inside of it. An affable Doberman named Horse wanders in and gobbles petit fours, "something real" is demanded by the interrogator in the shadows after Edie discusses the perfection of her giant earrings. The stag-flick atmosphere is encouraged ("just a simple screw"), Wein recites John Lennon's ever-larfing "Araminta Ditch" while the couple rolls around in bed, he deems their make-out session weak and gets an ashtray hurled at him in response. (In the middle of this, a whisper is audible as the first reel nears its end: "One more minute.") From Noël Coward to Strinberg, indolently droll and electric and concentrated, the revolt of sight against sound or, simply, the harrowing turning point of a relationship. Giddiness into somberness, voyeurism criticized and illustrated, so goes seduction. "I wish you'd shut up." "Say that convincingly." (Cf. Pinter's The Collection.) Drinking it all in is Andy Warhol, invisible and omnipresent, deadpan and hypersensitive. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |