MX © 2019 Alebrije Cine y Video S.A. de C.V. / Carnaval Films S.A. de C.V. / Estudios Churubusco Azteca S.A. / Oberon Cinematografica S.A. / Fondo de Inversion Estimulos al Cine (Fidecine). P: Antonio Chavarrarías, Marco Polo Constandse.
D: Arturo Ripstein. SC: Paz Alicia Garciadiego. Cin: Alejandro Cantú. PD: Alejandro García. Makeup: Mari Paz Robles. M: David Mansfield. S: Pablo Lach. ED: Mariana Rodríguez.
C: Sylvia Pasquel (Beatriz), Alejandro Suárez (El viejo), Greta Cervantes (Dinorah), Patricia Reyes Spindola (Isabel), Daniel Giménez-Cacho García (tango partner).
Theme song: "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss mit Liebe eingestellt" (comp.+lyr. Friedrich Hollaender), sung by Marlene Dietrich (1930) and heard in instrumental variations by David Mansfield.
"Perfume de gardenias" (Rafael Hernández Marín, 1935), a recording for this film in 2019.
Language: Spanish.
147 min
Festival premiere: 12 Sep 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.
Corona lockdown viewings / Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) online edition.
Viewed with English subtitles from the MSFF FestivalScope screening platform, viewed at a forest retreat in Punkaharju on a tv screen, 21 June 2020.
AA: Directed by Arturo Ripstein, the old Mexican master of "le cinéma de cruauté", and written by his wife Paz Alicia Garciadiego, his regular screenwriter since decades, El diablo entre las piernas is a harrowing account of sexual obsession.
The film is also a startling account of an old couple whose love has turned to hate. Nobody can torture each other as cruelly as an old married couple, because they know each other so well.
The classic of the theme is naturally August Strindberg's play The Dance of Death (1900), memorably filmed by Marcel Cravenne as La Danse de mort (1948) starring the real-life couple Erich von Stroheim and Denise Vernac.
Perhaps inspired by it Edward Albee wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962); Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred in Mike Nichols's film adaptation. Let's also remember a cinema original, Sacha Guitry's La Poison (1951), and Pierre Granier-Deferre's Le Chat (1971) based on the novel by Georges Simenon and starring Simone Signoret and Jean Gabin.
Apparently Ripstein's claustrophobic film has been filmed at the same Estudios Churubusco where the director started his film career as an uncredited assistant to Luis Buñuel in El ángel exterminador, another claustrophobic tale of black humour.
I have been slow in getting acquainted with Arturo Ripstein's films. The claustrophobic quality and the vision of life as hell was hard for me to take in El lugar sin limites (Hell Without Limits). Paz Alicia Garciadiego was not yet writing his films at the time.
Touches of fetishism, morbid jealousy and obsessions with smells are hallmarks of El diablo entre las piernas. The obsession is sex, but there is no love. Or the love has become so twisted that is hard to recognize. In the most touching sequence Beatriz and El Viejo study their honeymoon photographs and agonize over their gliding into their "little tricks". "When did this happen?".
A record I often heard in my childhood was Alvin and the Chipmunks' spoof version of "Buffalo Gals" (1962, featuring, besides David Seville [Ross Bagdasarian] the guest stars Mel Blanc [as Buffalo Bill] and June Foray [as Buffalo Gal]; the original song by John Hodges being from 1844).
– You've got everything!
– No son, there is one thing missing.
– What's missing, Buffalo Bill?
– Here's what's missing, boy: love, boy, love!
El diablo entre las piernas is well written and acted, and it has a compelling, unique atmosphere. But there is that one thing missing.
The visual approach is a "digital Death Valley" in black and white. Thinking back at La Danse de mort (1948) its unique visual solution was to shoot in an actual castle so cold that one could see the vapour of the actors' breath while they spitted out their venomous dialogue. There is not even such vapour in the airless digital space of El diablo entre las piernas.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OLAF MÖLLER'S MSFF INTRODUCTION and DIANA SANCHEZ (TIFF INTRODUCTION):
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OLAF MÖLLER'S MSFF INTRODUCTION and DIANA SANCHEZ (TIFF INTRODUCTION):
DEVIL BETWEEN THE LEGS
Ohjaaja: Arturo Ripstein
Maa: Meksiko
Vuosi: 2019
Kesto: 2.27
Kielet: espanja / tekstitys englanniksi
Alkup. nimi: El Diablo entre las Piernas
Kategoria: Ensi-illat, Subtitles in English, Uuden elokuvan helmet
Olaf Möller (MSFF): "Nimetön vanha mies ja hänen (Danten mieleen tuovasti nimetty) vaimonsa Beatriz ovat viettäneet niin paljon aikaa yhdessä ajan nuhrauttamassa asunnossaan, että inho ja rakkaus ovat käyneet perverssillä tavalla erottamattomiksi. Molemmat intohimoitsevat toisaalla hieman nuoremman väen kanssa: Mies nauttii rakastajasta, naiselle tuottaa iloa tango ja tanssipartneri. Palvelijatar tarkkailee näitä tekemisiä palveluskunnalle ominaisella ihastuksensekaisella halveksunnalla. Ikääntyvän aistillisuuden ja seksin antidraama kehittyy lähes yli kahden ja puolen tunnin ajan sairaalloisen uteliaisuuden kääntyessä hitaasti syvän humanistiseen sukellukseen elämäksi kutsuttuun pohjattomaan kuiluun – sen loppua kohden, kun millään muulla ei enää ole väliä kuin molemminpuolisella lohdulla ja yksilön tarpeilla."
"Devil Between the Legs on monin tavoin uusin variaatio Ripsteinin keskeisimmästä pakkomielteestä: huis clos, muttei mukavaan sartrelaiseen tapaan vaan synkemmällä lajikkeella, jonka hän itse ankkuroi Christopher Marlowen Tohtori Faustuksen traagiseen tarinaan José Donoson vuonna 1966 julkaistun romaanin El lugar sin límites moton kautta loistavassa sovituksessaan vuonna 1977: Helvetillä ei ole rajoja eikä sitä ole rajattu / Yhteen paikkaan; sillä missä me olemme on helvettikin / Ja siellä missä helvetti on, siellä on meidän aina oleminen. Loistavasti valaistut sekä säteilevät että kämäiset mustavalkokuvat, upean sulavat sekvenssiotokset, ja raihnaisen ihmislihan estoton esittely tekevät elokuvasta Devil Between the Legs ainutkertaisen kokemuksen." (OM)
ARTURO RIPSTEIN (s. 1944) otti varaslähdön elokuvan maailmaan legendaarisen tuottajan Alfredo Ripstein poikana ja Luis Buñuelin suojattina, joista jälkimmäistä hänen sanotaan avustaneen kreditoimattomana elokuvan Tuhon enkeli (El ángel exterminador, 1962) tuotannossa. Todisteena siitä, että Ripsteinillä (tai hänen perheellään) on täytynyt olla vakavasti otettavaa vaikutusvaltaa, toimii se, että 21 vuoden iässä hän pääsi ohjaamaan esikoispitkänsä Aika kuolla (Tiempo de morir, 1965; käsikirjoitus: Carlos Fuentes & Gabriel García Márquez!) ammattiväkeä käyttäen – alan liittojen jäykkiä sääntöjä uhmaten. Joidenkin underground-elokuvakokeilujen ja uusien pitkien elokuvien jälkeen Ripstein asettautui meksikolaiselokuvan etulinjaan elokuvallaan El castillo de la pureza (1972). Hän on tehnyt lukuisia mestariteoksia, joista mainittakoon El imperio de la fortuna (1985), La mujer del puerto (1991), Principio y fin (1993), La virgen de la lujuria (2002) ja Las razones del corazón (2012). (MSFF)
Diana Sanchez (Toronto International Film Festival):
"Geriatric sex and other hazards plaguing aging lovers get a candid, unflinching, and darkly hilarious spin in the latest from legendary Mexican director-screenwriter duo Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garcíadiego (Bleak Street)."
"From legendary Mexican director-screenwriter duo Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garcíadiego, last at the Festival in 2015 with the hauntingly lurid Bleak Street, comes this tale of elderly amour fou. Eerily beautiful, utterly profane, and riddled with insights into human desire at its basest, Devil Between the Legs ushers us into the private chambers of warring old lovers to capture scenes few films have dared to envision."
"Beatriz (Sylvia Pasquel) and the Old Man (Alejandro Suárez) have been together for decades. A retired homeopathic pharmacist, the Old Man now divides his time between their Mexico City home where he shuffles around in his housecoat, raging against Beatriz, and paying secret visits to his mistress. Beatriz, when not bearing the brunt of the Old Man's tirades, sneaks out to take tango lessons — and to proposition her younger dance partner (Daniel Giménez Cacho, also at the Festival with Chicuarotes). With their children having grown up and abandoned them long ago, the only person left to witness the aging couple's ever-escalating routine is Dinorah (Greta Cervantes), the young maid who will eventually take matters into her own hands."
"Shot in silvery black and white and featuring Friedrich Hollaender's wistful "Falling in Love Again" as its poignant refrain, Devil Between the Legs is arrestingly candid about geriatric sex. Through Ripstein and Garcíadiego's absorbing story, we come to understand the labyrinthine intricacies of how active minds, hearts, and libidos negotiate with the vagaries of ailing bodies. The result is darkly hilarious and strangely touching."
DIANA SANCHEZ
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