毒药1991

In submitting to a prison life, embracing it, I could reject the world that had rejected me.

All night long I built an imaginary life of which he was the center, and I always gave that life which was begun over and over and transformed a dozen times a violent end.

I felt myself growing mean, icy, stiff, gleaming like a sword blade.

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dream is nursed in the dark.

观感首先是压抑的，让人带着猎奇的心态去关注走向，最后还得花时间将隐喻和多义并行的呼应慢慢剖析，不是轻易能讲清楚的电影。

三段小故事，Hero，Homo，Horror延伸自让·热内（Jean Genet）自传体小说，互相没有交集，但共同点在于

1. 本无害之人，因社会的种种伤害，最终都某种意义走上了形成对社会恶狠狠的反向报复性质道路。如Homo中的John，拥抱监狱以拒绝这个拒绝他的社会；如Horror中的暗示艾滋病的病毒传播；如小社会“家庭”压抑中的小男孩最终开枪弑父。

2. 为了融入群体，融入主流价值观，哪怕要做出非本意之事，也必须以”同流合污“来达成步调一致。但影片并非从一种“批判”角度来表现此事，相反，我们看到的是除了普通社会事件背后的无可奈何外，更多是认同角色的自我认同。无谓善恶，无谓道德，无谓判断。我们见证口水变成鲜花降下，也听见天使在天花上放屁。

照例宣传一下公众号 虛穴取繭 （ID：cocoonics）

Queer filmmaker Todd Haynes' debut feature POISON dazzles as a multi-faceted cinematic triptych, three segments: Hero, Horror, Homo, all inspired by Jean Genet's novels (with his texts sporadically materialize on the screen as inner beacons), are intertwined altogether yet each is bestowed with a sui generis visual style that speaks volumes of Haynes' eclectic idioms.

Hero takes the form of a grainy and slipshod pseudo-documentary, interviewing sundry characters about a deadly homicide further confounded by a surreal twist, a 7-year-old boy, shoots his father dead and then wondrously flies away from the window witnessed by his mother Felicia (Meeks), various interviewees recounts the boy's aberrant deportment before the incident, some are startlingly perverse, finally, through Felicia's account, the boy's ascension smacks of something punitive and defiant in the face of family dysfunction and violent impulse, rather dissimilar in its undertone and timbre from that WTF upshot in Alejandro González Iñárritu's BIRDMAN (2014, 7.6/10).

Horror, shot in retro-monochrome and abounds with eye-catching Dutch angles, namely is a none-too-engrossing pastiche of the erstwhile B-movies and body horror, a scientist Dr. Thomas Graves (Maxwell), accidentally ingests the serum of "human sexuality" which he has successfully extracted, starts to transmogrify into a leprosy-inflicted monster, and his condition is deadly contagious, which threats lives around him, especially his admirer Dr. Nancy Olsen (Norman), who against all odds, not daunted by his physical deterioration. In comparison, this segment is less savory owing to its own unstimulating camp, where Hero ends with a subjective ascending, the upshot for a beleaguered gargoyle is nothing but plummeting.

Last but not the least, Homo is plainly a more self-reflexive treatment conjured up à la Fassbinder's QUERELLE (1982), another mainstay of queer cinema derived from Genet's text. A prisoner John Broom (Renderer), grows intimate towards the blow-in Jack Bolton (Lyons), whom he has met before during his stint in a juvenile facility of delinquency, Jack's humiliated past emerges inside John's mind, now it is his turn to exert his suppressed libido. This chapter is as homoerotic as one can possibly imagine, a maneuver Haynes would have unwillingly relinquished en route pursuing mainstream acceptance, one tantalizing sequence of Broom groping an asleep Jack is divinely graphic and atmospherically transcendent.

Credited as an experimental juvenilia, POISON throbs with vitality, ambition and knowing archness, though the end result is far from flawless, it potently anticipates many a Haynes' modus operandi, say, the segmental structure and interview-style in I'M NOT THERE. (2007, 8.0/10), his distinct prediction for the photogenic period setting and outfit in FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002, 9.2/10) and CAROL (2015, 8.9/10), not to mention his latest sortie into black-and-white mystique and paralleled storytelling in the Cannes-premiered WONDERSTRUCK (2017).

Not many can embrace perversity as plucky as Mr. Haynes has done, whether it is a tragedy can easily take place around us in real life, or a man living through his most egregious incubus, or a blatantly idealized contest of one's sexuality (motifs like wedding, saliva and scars are all defying their accepted norms), just like a child’s stretching hand in the opening credit, Haynes' first directorial outing jauntily treads through many taboo subjects and in retrospect, vindicates that it will be our profound loss if his talent fails to be acknowledged and utilized in full scale.

referential points: Todd Haynes' SAFE (1995, 8.4/10), VELVET GOLDMINE (1998, 6.7/10); Rainer Werner Fassbinder's QUERELLE (1982, 7.8/10).