Reviews
Tiresia | Review
And God Created Man?
Film is weakened by confused, literally hard-to-watch story.
One third Greek Mythology, another part human tragedy and one half completely useless, this is the type of film which will make you probably ask yourself where is this film going only to end with the same question. If French director Bertrand Bonello’s last film the money-shot Le Pornographe was a hard watch, then this film has nothing to measure up to, except perhaps some of the better titles in the triple-x transsexual genre of film in your local video shop.
Grossly forgetting that film is for and about interacting with audiences and not solely for Greek folklore fanatics, this film gets weighed down by a tale about the soul of a man who is also comes in the shape of a woman, which is observably foreshadowed by a visit in a museum. More twisted and bizarre than your ordinary art film, this starts off like a Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, but by mentioning this film, in this review, I feel as if I’m giving it some kind of a warranted merit. Tiresia is firstly about an obsessive man hoping to convert a tortured soul in this Brazilian transsexual, which is graphically detailed enough to give us a full view example of a cursed body. It is then in which like the pair of video sequences showing volcanic eruptions, this film gets nasty and splits off into a second section as a pair of scissors comes into play and turns the film and our stomach upside down.
As a theme of construction and destruction infuses itself and we are left trying to make some sense in this sabotaged story and not even the characters can help us out in our distress since part of the confusion is in this duel role notion that sees actor Laurent Lucas play two different characters where perhaps more than a change in sweaters could have enlightened us on the different viewpoints, and where we see the character of Tiresia played by two frail looking, Portuguese speaking humans.
Tiresia is unfortunately further proof that a poetic voice inside a deliberate art type approach doesn’t work if it is not meant to be shared with others, instead Bonello’s talent is limited to his musical fine classically trained ear and not filmmaking, and especially not in casting decisions.
Rating 0.5 stars
