Review: “You Can’t Kiss a French Movie”

A multi-media show by Shelley Farmer and Alex Hare creates a dialogue between theater and independent filmmaking, borrowing its style from French New Wave.

An awkward production assistant Agness (Erin Healani Chung) dressed in all black, makes her way in front of the audience and delivers the usual theater announcements about the fire exits and cell phones. Her badly hidden nervousness and excitement puzzle me for a moment. Is this for real? Or have the You Can’t Kiss a French Movie already began? This experimental play by Shelley Farmer and Alex Hare is designed like a Russian nesting doll: it’s a movie shot on a theater stage, and is inspired by French New Wave films.   

Shelley Farmer and Greg Balla in You Can’t Kiss a French Movie. Photo by photo by Emma Wainwright.

Lola (Shelley Farmer) is a cabaret singer in love with Michel (Greg Balla). Introduced to us through the camera in the hands of the Cameraman/Director (Adam Weppler), they first appear offstage behind the curtain and on the screen in front of us. Cinephilia has a voyeuristic nature, which the director Alex Hare cleverly emphasizes by staging some of the scenes in the spaces fully or partially obscured from the audience and faithfully streaming everything on the big screen. But is the camera gaze objective or objectifying? 

Farmer eventually takes the initiative in her hands and overthrows the authority of almighty Director/Cameraman. You Can’t Kiss a French Movie, styled after the films of Godard, tries to be less of a nostalgic sentiment of the past and more of a cautionary tale for modern filmmakers. It teaches us to take matters into our own hands in order to tell our own stories. Unfortunately, the feminist message of the finale feels forced.   

The cinematic beauty is the play’s strongest feature. Even though the few elements of the sets, designed by An-Lin Dauber, are right before our eyes, they come alive on screen anew, touched by movie magic. Lighting design by Jennifer Fok and camera work by Adam Weppler make the picture on the big screen irresistibly delicious.

The only movie scene that is pre-filmed as opposed to live-streamed takes place on a train platform on a beautiful, snowy day. Farmer and Balla are recording a voiceover for it. The slight discrepancy between the lip movement and actor’s voices doesn’t allow us to slip into somnambulistic film-watching mode. This encourages watching and listening critically. But the beautiful black-and-white image draws us in, making a strong argument for the artistic craft that filmmaking requires. Having the noble intention behind the beautiful picture is perhaps more important, but You Can’t Kiss a French Movie doesn’t make a very strong argument in the ideological department.

However, the show is a success in facilitating the dialogue between theater and film. In most multi-media productions, video projections are merely a tool, a window to a different time (Dodin’s Cherry Orchrd, where home films illustrate how happy the life once was), space (Van Hove’s Kings, where the entire labyrinth of backstage is only visible through the live-stream) or the depths of human soul in the actor’s close-up (Thomas Ostermeier’s Richard III, where the power of final monologue is doubled by the blown up video of Richard’s face).

You Can’t Kiss a French Movie, being a theater show about movie making, takes the capabilities of live-streaming even further in the scenes where the interaction between the actors and the projection are simultaneously unfolding next to each other. The intimacy of HERE’s downstairs theater allows for the similar reality-to-screen scale ratio, which essentially means that you see the same scene twice in the mirror-like effect. Except that the reflection is subjective and represents the vision of a person behind the camera. This is where the show makes its strongest argument even before any of the words of rebelling feminism are spoken.

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You Can’t Kiss a French Movie played at HERE, 145 6^th Ave, Manhattan, on December 15-17, 2017. The running time is 70 minutes with no intermission.

You Can’t Kiss a French Movie is by Shelley Farmer and Alex Hare. Directed by Alex Hare. Produced by Madeleine Goldsmith. Set and costume design is by An-Lin Dauber. Lighting design is by Jennifer Fok. Original Music is by Michael Gildin. Sound Design is by Gabriel Lozada. Film Consultation is by John Zhao.

The cast is Shelley Farmer, Greg Balla, Erin Healani Chung, and Adam Weppler

Review: “Farmhouse/Whorehouse: an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Lili Taylor”

Suzanne Bocanegra speaks though Lili Taylor delivering a lecture on the dual perception of woman as a Mother and a Whore.

New York conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra often visited her grandparents’ farm in Texas as a kid. Across from it, you guessed it, was a brothel. And not just any brothel, but the infamous Chicken Ranch that inspired the 1978 Broadway musical, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and its 1982 film adaptation. Combining her childhood memories, latter life events, anthropological research and popular culture references, Bocanegra reflects on womanhood at large in Farmhouse/Whorehouse: an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Lili Taylor.    

Suzanne Bocanegra and Lili Taylor in Farmhouse/Whorehouse. Photo by Richard Termine.

As announced in the title, the show stars the film and stage actress Lili Taylor (most recently seen on Broadway in Marvin’s Room). For the duration of one hour, Taylor stands in a square of light, flipping slides on the large screen above and delivering “the lecture”. Farmhouse/Whorehouse might be seen as a solo show, not of Taylor though, but of Bocanegra, who is also present on stage on the opposite corner from the actress. Bocanegra monotonically reads her notes into a microphone, bent above the desk lit with a single lamp. Taylor, who has an earplug (?), repeats what she hears with the dexterity of a seasoned news broadcaster or simultaneous interpreter, handling every word with great care.

The actress wears a black skirt over black pants, a style inspired by the mid 19th-century Oneida community. The lecture is seemingly organized by the principle of free association as Bocanegra mentions other utopian socio-agrarian projects, like the one of 18th century philosopher Charles Fourier, or hippy communes spread across the US in 1960s and 70s. Another cluster of topics concerns prostitution and is illustrated by paintings of French surrealists and photographs of the brothel, Chicken Ranch.

Whether speaking about women pioneers, paintings of peasants by Jean Francois Millet or prostitution in Paris in 19th century, Bocanegra ties her findings to her own experiences. And vice versa, the events in her own, life like interactions with her grandparents, being pregnant, or climbing up five flights of stairs loaded with groceries and kids, fuel the artist’s thoughts. It might be difficult to follow the non-linear narrative accompanied by slides pulled from all over the place. Among them: pregnant belly cakes found on the Internet, Monet paintings, and video fragments of popular movies. It also takes time to get used to the echoing speech of the writer and actress.

Farmhouse/Whorehouse is deeply personal yet not too sentimental and, being a lecture, teaches you a thing or two. Bocanegra humanizes the experiences of marginalized and heroic women alike. She uses the duality of woman as saint or whore to structure the presentation and show the inadequacy and limitations of these categories.

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Farmhouse/Whorehouse: an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Lili Taylor played at BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Pl, on December 12-16, 2017. The running time is 1 hour with no intermission.

Farmhouse/Whorehouse  is by Suzanne Bocanegra. Directed by Lee Sunday Evans. Produced by Sandra Garner and Lingua Franca Arts. Lighting design by Eric Southern.  

The cast is Lili Taylor and Suzanne Bocanegra.