Download (12MB) - University of Salford Institutional Repository

notion that 'Decadence cultivates a fastidious affection for the disreputable' and that it
'stresses the interrelationship of virtue and vice, beauty and ugliness' (Reed, 1985: 14). The
scenes are often lugubrious, closer to a morbid adult maturity than to the exuberance of
inexperienced youth.
The sequence of Theo masturbating before a poster of Marlene Dietrich while being
watched by Matthew and Isabel exemplifies this contrived prurience. The characters'
positioning, with Theo distanced from Isabel and Matthew, creates a performance space
characterized by separation and silence, this being interrupted only by the noise of the
physical act. Contemporary 1960s values of spontaneity, collectivity and interaction are
absent, and the scene evokes a sense of oppression with Theo perceived as a victim of a
demeaning forfeit rather than the protagonist of a provocative gesture to dispel any lingering
inhibitions. In a suitably gratuitous epilogue to the scene, Isabel runs her fingertips over her
brother's sperm which is splashed over the poster. A similar impression evolves as Isabel is
deflowered by Matthew on the kitchen floor in the presence of Theo, who is portrayed
nonchalantly frying eggs nearby. Echoing the way Isabel explored the texture of his sperm,
Theo kneels to touch his sister's vaginal discharge, a gesture which is repeated by an
astonished Matthew, before he embraces Isabel and weeps with her. Here too the scene's
composition, combined with the verbal silence and the calculatedly slow pace of the take,
removes any hint of romantic love or joyfulness, while generating a disconcerting sense of
objectification rather than sensual satisfaction. These examples, together with the
idiosyncratic camerawork discussed earlier, establish the presence of a subjectivity that has
little in common with youthful exuberance, and they open up a range of considerations that
go beyond questions of aesthetics. Paradoxically, in a film that purports to depict an era
characterized by a progressive liberation of the individual, many of it sequences hint at a
more exploitative dynamic at its point of production. Perhaps the visual excess in T\ie
175