Sweet Movie (1974, Dušan Makavejev)

The film consists of two separate narratives. It starts off well with a beauty contest for the vaginas of virgins with a billionaire marrying the winner. He reveals his gold penis and urinates on her while people watch through the window. She is packed in a trunk bound for Paris, where she meets and has intercourse with a Latin singer. The sexual act is interrupted by nuns who frighten the lovers into bulbus glandis. The second story involves a woman sailing a candy-filled boat down a river, with a massive papier-mache head of Karl Marx on the prow and a lover onboard who is from the Battleship Potemkin. She eventually does a seductive striptease for a group of children, then has sex with her paramour in a vat of sugar before stabbing him. A scene at a dinner table where people spit their food at each other, kiss, gargle, vomit and urinate stands as one of the most disgustingly off-putting I have seen. The film also features defecation and footage of remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims. For its time it must have been pretty shocking, it’s far more extreme than the terminally dull Flaming Creatures and is clearly influenced by the Vienna Actionists, of which Otto Muehl stars. Not surprisingly it was banned in many countries. It’s been described as a political comedy but I found it neither funny nor could I decipher any point to the proceedings. There are some interesting visuals but it’s far too randomly nonsensical to keep interest after the first 10 minutes.
2/5
DVD Released by Criterion