Criminal Gestures and Transformations

Office Killer

In her first feature film direction to date, American artist Cindy Sherman concocts a peculiarly funny caricature of psycho-thriller and horror genres. The film follows the transformation of the “pathetic” office mouse Dorine into an unruly predator, a femme-fatale-gone-wrong. Having stirred up criminal chaos, Dorine finds much pleasure in fashioning a grisly tableau of her bitchy colleagues in a dark basement, upping the stakes in Sherman’s trademark portrayal of perversity. More »

A Question of Silence

Bags, shoes, hangers and clothes rails are transformed from innocuous accessories and boutique equipment into deadly weapons in Marleen Gorris’s feature film debut A Question of Silence. Three women, all strangers to each other, cross paths in a boutique when a relatively trivial shoplifting incident unleashes their suppressed frustrations. More »

Ms.45

Ms. 45 , (1981) directed by Abel Ferrara is a violent retribution drama in which a shy seamstress is brutally raped twice in the same day and transformed into a killer, shooting men with her .45 pistol. The transformation of the heroine is marked by the change of her style and dress, from dowdy to a sleek, cat-like vamp who wears bright red lipstick and killer boots. More »

Body Double (X)

The French artist Brice Dellsperger’s Body Double (X) (2000) is a brilliant 21st century reconstruction of the torrid 1974 film L' Important c'est d'aimer by Andrzej Zulawski . Mouthing the 1974 soundtrack and appearing in various costumes, drag artist Jean-Luc Verna acts out all of the roles within a cut up and fragmenting, digitalized visual narrative. More »