RAPE will be the focus of one of two special evenings in which Yoko Ono will screen and discuss her film work
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
4 West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, July 13, and Wednesday, July 15, 7:30
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk and online beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
MoMA’s excellent “Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971” sheds new light on the seminal period of the Tokyo-born multimedia artist’s career, comprising music, photographs, sculpture, interactive performances, memorabilia and ephemera, paintings, films, and instruction pieces. “Ono’s art from this period is run through with a complex interplay between her own absence and presence,” Klaus Biesenbach writes in the extensive exhibition catalog. “Over time, Ono was able to turn her complex handling of artistic presence and absence into a sophisticated treatment of a public image, which allowed her to reach a broad audience with her artistic and political messages.” The artist will be present at MoMA this week for a pair of special presentations of her films and videos. On Monday, July 13, “An Evening with Yoko Ono and Chrissie Iles” will explore Ono’s musical oeuvre through well-known conceptual films and rare footage, followed by a discussion between Ono and Whitney curator Chrissie Iles. On Wednesday, July 15, “An Evening with Yoko Ono and Alexandra Munroe” examines Ono’s 1969 feature-length collaboration with husband John Lennon, Rape, along with the shorts Film No. 4 (Bottoms) and Takahiko Iimura’s Ai (Love), followed by a conversation between Ono and Guggenheim senior curator Alexandra Munroe, who refers to Ono as “one of my dearest friends. Whether sitting around a kitchen table or in more canonized theatres, at this point in our relationship, the most valued time I spend with her are the conversations we have together.” In the catalog, Clive Phillpot explains, “Lennon biographer Ray Coleman claimed that [Rape] ‘parodied the story of the Beatles’ escalator to success,’ but it is much more likely that it reflected what curator Chrissie Iles described as ‘the tension and fear felt by Ono and Lennon as the intrusive press and public attention generated by their fame became increasingly harder to bear.’” The exhibition itself includes such marvelous Ono films as Fly, Cut Piece, Eyeblink, and Film No. 5 (Smile).
About ten minutes into journalist David Thorpe’s absolutely charming yet emotionally bittersweet Do I Sound Gay?, he is at dinner with his best friends, Alberto and Sam, and the three are discussing the title question. It’s a fascinating conversation that is worth detailing extensively here. “I have the impression that you think it sounds bad,” Alberto says about David’s voice. “I interpret David’s feelings about this, and the feelings around this whole project, as bad. He has negative feelings about his voice, about the perception that it creates.” “And you don’t feel that at all yourself?” Sam asks. Alberto responds, “I have sort of a generic self-loathing that is created around my gayness. . . . . But I don’t think I can say it’s the only thing, or the main thing.” Finally, David chimes in, explaining, “I think I feel out of sync with my voice, and, at least it seems to me, that it’s anxiety about sounding too gay, so, okay, let’s see what it’s like to not sound gay, and maybe I’ll feel more in sync and maybe I’ll have some idea what my voice should sound like.” Alberto then gets to the heart of the matter, inquiring, “But you could also argue, why don’t you just accept how you sound?” And Alberto sums it all up: “We have never talked about this idea until you brought it up. I don’t know anybody else that I’ve talked to about it either. So I think there is this thing, obviously, that we all are aware of that hasn’t been spoken of. Maybe this is the elephant in the room.” David spends the rest of the film exploring the elephant in the room, meeting with speech therapists who examine his voice and teach him how to change it; talking to such out-of-the-closet gay icons as Dan Savage, Tim Gunn, Margaret Cho, David Sedaris, Don Lemon, and George Takei, who delve into their own gayness and how their voice is part of that; introducing us to a boy who was beaten up at school at a very young age because of his voice; and interviewing gay people on the street, who share their thoughts on whether they, or he, do or don’t sound gay, and whether that matters. Sedaris, whose short story “Go Carolina” served as inspiration for Thorpe, tells him, “I’m embarrassed to say this, but sometimes somebody will say, ‘I didn’t know you were gay.’ It’s like, Why does that make me feel good. I hate myself for thinking that. It’s very disturbing. I thought I was beyond that. What’s the problem if somebody assumes that I’m gay when I open my mouth? Why do I have a problem with that?”
It’s rather hard to tell how much Japanese auteur Nagisa Ôshima is monkeying around with his very strange 1986 movie, Max, Mon Amour, a love story between an intelligent, beautiful woman and a chimpanzee. The director of such powerful films as Cruel Story of Youth; Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; Taboo; and In the Realm of the Senses seems to have lost his own senses with this surprisingly straightforward, tame tale of bestiality, a collaboration with master cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who shot seminal works by Truffaut and Godard; screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who has written or cowritten nearly ninety films by such directors as Pierre Étaix (who plays the detective in Max), Luis Buñuel, Volker Schlöndorff, Philippe Garrel, and Miloš Forman; and special effects and makeup artist extraordinaire Rick Baker, the mastermind behind the 1976 King Kong, the Michael Jackson video Thriller, Ratboy, Hellboy, and An American Werewolf in London, among many others. Evoking Bedtime for Bonzo and Ed more than Planet of the Apes and Gorillas in the Mist, Max, Mon Amour is about a well-to-do English family living in Paris whose lives undergo a rather radical change when husband Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) catches his elegant wife, Margaret (Charlotte Rampling), in bed with a chimp. Margaret insists that she and the chimp, Max, are madly in love and somehow convinces Peter to let her bring the sensitive yet dangerous beast home, which confuses their son, Nelson (Christopher Hovik), and causes their maid, Maria (Victoria Abril), to break out in ugly rashes. Peter, a diplomat, works for the queen of England, so as he prepares for a royal visit to Paris, he also has to deal with this new addition to his ever-more-dysfunctional family.