Madame X: An Absolute Ruler
Talking Pictures: The Cinema of Yvonne Rainer
July 21 - 27, 2017
This little-seen lesbian pirate movie by Ulrike Ottinger features a motley crew of women, among them a rollerskating Yvonne Rainer.
Ulrike Ottinger was one of the most visually adventurous filmmakers of the German New Wave, and this little-seen lesbian pirate movie was her debut feature. A motley crew of women, among them a rollerskating Yvonne Rainer, join the tyrannical Madame X aboard her ship Orlando in this welcome and singular genre riff. Languorously paced and elaborately stylized—the costumes designed by Tabea Blumenschein are especially outlandish—the film is ultimately less a swashbuckler than a parable of freedom and failure; beneath its opulent surfaces lies a feminist conflict of the psyche. “The journey,” Ottinger has suggested, “is not a journey outward into adventure but a journey into the interior.”
Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. Image courtesy of Women Make Movies.
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