The debauchery of a bunch of bewigged 18th-century libertines is presented with cerebral seriousness, but it’s an ordeal to watch
Albert Serra’s Liberté, or Liberty, is a gruesome midsummer night’s dream of Sadeian horror in which a bunch of verbose bewigged libertines in the 18th century gather in a dark forest in their carriages for some prototypical dogging. It is some years before the French Revolution, centuries before Viagra. This film is an ordeal that I never want to go through again, but it’s undoubtedly executed with a cerebral conviction and uncompromising seriousness that no Anglo Saxon film-maker could approach.
A group of (fictional) aristocrats, expelled from the court of Louis XVI, approach a sympathetic German nobleman, the Duc de Walchen (played by Visconti veteran Helmut Berger) for help; with his guidance they assemble one moonlit night in a forest for some uninhibited debauchery – and only that quaint word will do.
Albert Serra’s Liberté, or Liberty, is a gruesome midsummer night’s dream of Sadeian horror in which a bunch of verbose bewigged libertines in the 18th century gather in a dark forest in their carriages for some prototypical dogging. It is some years before the French Revolution, centuries before Viagra. This film is an ordeal that I never want to go through again, but it’s undoubtedly executed with a cerebral conviction and uncompromising seriousness that no Anglo Saxon film-maker could approach.
A group of (fictional) aristocrats, expelled from the court of Louis XVI, approach a sympathetic German nobleman, the Duc de Walchen (played by Visconti veteran Helmut Berger) for help; with his guidance they assemble one moonlit night in a forest for some uninhibited debauchery – and only that quaint word will do.
- 12/2/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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