Please do not read the following film description and review beneath the line if you do not wish to read references to pornography.
It is included here because it is considered a successful portrait of an era filmed with a creative style that evokes the silent film era. The tale is more psychologically provocative than anything else but concerns early Victorian pornography.
The film is unrated, and was shown at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Cannes Film Festival.
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This deliciously subversive, beautifully photographed film by award-winning Russian director Alexei Balabanov explores the seamy underside of the early 20th century upper classes. The sinister Johann and his wicked assistant, who photograph the floggings of bare-bottomed women, maneuver their way into two well-to-do families, involving them in their pornographic schemes. Darkly humorous and startlingly original, this compelling tale reveals the manipulation and revenge, hidden passions and sadomasochistic urges, underlying the charm and propriety of Victorian society. Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival.
Filmed in orange sepia, ”Of Freaks and Men” was inspired, the director has stated, by a collection of vintage erotic photographs of young women being flagellated. And the movie, set in turn-of-the-century St. Petersburg, takes meticulous pains to recreate the look and atmosphere of period daguerreotypes. Compared with today’s X-rated fare, of course, the photographs of women bending over and being roundly but not viciously flogged on their bare buttocks by a stern nanny seem laughably modest. (It is) a witty, inventive exercise of historical imagination and cinematic style, ”Of Freaks and Men” is a movie that remains emotionally locked inside its own dream world. It is the film equivalent of watching a vintage tableau vivant re-enacted on a stage: an elegant curiosity. -NYT
Starring Sergey Makovetskiy, Dinara Drukarova, Anzhelika Nevolina, Viktor Sukhorukov, Alyosha Dyo.
In Russian with English subtitles.