Lib­erté

Describ­ing a film that, from the out­set, doesn’t appear to be a com­e­dy, as a com­e­dy, is a method some­times used by crit­ics as a form of deflec­tion. Com­e­dy tends to be pri­mal and instinc­tu­al, maybe even a bit throw­away, and so to use it as a descrip­tor in this way serves to elim­i­nate both a film’s com­plex­i­ties and your own need to take that film at its pur­port­ed face value.

To give an exam­ple, in 1997, at a screen­ing of William Friedkin’s The Exor­cist, most of the patrons chose to laugh their way through some of the film’s most gru­elling sequences, using com­e­dy as a way to off­set the poten­tial for trauma.

Albert Serra’s Lib­erté was wide­ly lam­bast­ed when it screened at the 2019 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for its extend­ed dura­tion and lack of a sto­ry­line, as it pre­sent­ed a fleshy coterie of bewigged 18^th-cen­tu­ry French dandies skulk­ing around a moon­lit wood­land clear­ing while engag­ing in all man­ner of erot­ic tom­fool­ery. Hav­ing been eject­ed from the court of King Louis XVI for their foul predilec­tions, this clan­des­tine col­lec­tive decide instead to enact their own pri­vate rev­o­lu­tion – just ahead of the one on the hori­zon that result­ed in the king’s sud­den head loss via guillotine.

About an hour in, it seems clear that Ser­ra is jok­ing with his audi­ence, plac­ing us in the uncom­fort­able posi­tion of being unwill­ing voyeurs (among oth­ers on screen with frilly blousons and handy tele­scopes) to these minia­ture episodes of unbri­dled lib­er­tin­ism. But then maybe it’s not so uncom­fort­able, as isn’t this what film watch­ing is all about? That is, being asked to observe peo­ple from a safe dis­tance while they syn­the­sise and offload naked emo­tions for the cam­era. Is all cin­emago­ing not just tac­it par­tic­i­pa­tion in a scrub­land orgy?

If you think about it, that’s pret­ty fun­ny. There’s a sequence in which one noble­man is being repeat­ed­ly caned on his der­rière while anoth­er man watch­es excit­ed­ly, and it goes on for so long that you pass through the look­ing glass of pure hor­ror and into the realms of absur­dist com­e­dy. Each scream trans­lates as an equal fusion of plea­sure and pain. But which side to fall on?

Lib­erté is not a com­e­dy that evokes bel­ly laugh­ter, but one that elic­its coiled amuse­ment at the idea of the micro­dra­mas that arise from such a sit­u­a­tion. Ser­ra man­aged a sim­i­lar tonal bal­anc­ing act in his pre­vi­ous film, The Death of Louis XIV, in which it was hard not to tit­ter as fuss­bud­get retain­ers attempt to pro­long the life of a des­ic­cat­ing regent played with dead­pan aplomb by Jean-Pierre Léaud. Here though, roles are enforced, cou­plings are sug­gest­ed and then sud­den­ly reneged upon, com­plete sex­u­al equal­i­ty appears to be the rules of the game, though clear class struc­tures remain.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing, unique and affir­ma­tive film about the rev­o­lu­tion­ary act of self-expres­sion, and the con­nec­tion between back­room intel­lec­tu­al inquiry and broad pub­lic think­ing. Ser­ra and DoP Artur Tort film the vignettes in a man­ner which negates any eroti­cism, as they are instead inter­est­ed in the logis­tics, the process and the unspo­ken trans­ac­tions that are made between these con­sent­ing adults. It’s a film which could arouse out­rage, or bore­dom, or even a strange kind of mirth, and as such it feels as if Ser­ra may have end­ed up mak­ing one of the sem­i­nal mid­night movies.