Varie
Vicky lavora come cameriera e vorrebbe diventare una star, ma i suoi propositi sono continuamente vanificati da audizioni disastrose e un indiscutibile accento tedesco. Il suo relativo equilibrio quotidiano rischia di andare in pezzi quando Hans, suo padre, le annuncia che intende farle visita. Vicky decide di nascondergli il proprio lavoro e l’inizio di una storia lesbica, così chiede a Ben, un’amico, di coprirla fingendosi suo marito. L’incontro di Hans con l’esotica e variegata sottocultura dell’ambiente in cui vive Vicky, composto da personaggi di ogni tipo, fachiri ed ex reginette porno (tra le quali Annie Sprinkle, che interpreta se stessa), porterà entrambi a conoscere e scoprire nuove avventure… (Sinossi tratta da una traduzione di Emanuela Tione)
CRITICA:
There are a few ways to read the title of Monika Treut’s new film, “My Father Is Coming,” but if you take my advice, you’ll read it as a warning. As in, “My father is coming!! My father is coming!! Head for the hills!”
Set in the grimiest parts of New York City, “My Father Is Coming” is a pernicious, amateurish little nothing and should be avoided like the plague. Get your shots now. Treut’s story is focused loosely and uncertainly on a struggling German actress named Vicky (Shelley Kaestner) who’s so underskilled that she can’t even get a gig as a piggy German tourist. “Think deutsche marks,” her director tells her. “Think Nazis!”
Vicky’s meanderings bring her into contact with a kinky assortment of New York fringe dwellers, among them a performance artist-porn queen (played by the real-life porn queen-performance artist Annie Sprinkle) whose bag of tricks includes a crystal and a speculum, and a female-to-male transsexual named Joe (Michael Massee) who can barely stop looking at himself in the mirror long enough to drive. “I have to keep looking at myself,” he says, “to remember who I am.”
The performances here are awkward to a point that sets your teeth on edge. The one exception is Alfred Edel, who plays the visiting father with a kind of mystified innocence. This strange world is a far cry from his small home town in Germany. Nevertheless, he plunges effortlessly into the swim of things, getting the commercial Vicky had been turned down for and winning Annie’s heart (at least for the afternoon). With his bulging belly and thick German accent, he’s supposed to be a pig, but he turns out to be the only character we can warm to. Still, did he have to take his shirt off?
“My Father Is Coming” is unrated but contains nudity and adult situations. (By Hal Hinson, Washington Post)
“A cheerful cornucopia of kinkiness where genders and sexual preferences aren’t simply bent, they are twisted into corkscrews.” Stephen Holden, New York Times
“Art-film outlaw Monika Treut provides hard and hilarious copy with her decidedly iconoclastic works of pansexuality…. An orgasmic opus!” Michael Musto, Village Voice, New York
“A wry comic look at the sexual and erotic underworld …. Treut pretty much hits the nail on the head.” John Keogh, Variety
“Monika Treut’s My Father Is Coming couples the deadpan humour of early underground films with a feminist New Age embracing of the odd. The result is sweet and triumphantly off-beat.” Jay Scott, The Globe and Mail, Toronto
“This charm – teaming with humor, love, sex and subculture – is hard toresist: precise, to the point and totally unpretentious.” Peter Körte, Frankfurter Rundschau
“My Father Is Coming gives us the light touch of true subversion.” Frederic Strauss, Cahiers du Cinema, Paris
“My Father Is Coming is a funny and high-strung ballad set among the freaks of New York City. It shows that the filmmaker is in the best of health dealing with her exiled condition with such humor and punch.” Edouard Waintrop, Liberation, Paris
“Treut here spins a tale of sexual awakening, vogueing and bratwurst, presided over with ecstasy-aunt jollity by post-porn sex goddess Annie Sprinkle … It’s an engaging world-view — SoHo chic seen from a sort of polysexual, Teutonic ‘Carry On’ perspective.” Jonathan Romney, Time Out, London
“Treut has orchestrated a fascinating and funny study of the mutability of desire, identity and the body.” Cherry Smyth, City Limits, London
“This is a very endearing comedy by a director of skill, sensibility and heart.” Bob Satuloff, New York Native
“Treut has a wonderful sense of humor that needs no translation and her cast travels with ease between enforced alienation and yearning for love and affection. Treut creates a New York, a universe, of endless frustration and endless potential.” John Anderson, New York Newsday
“My Father Is Coming is a 2000 volt comedy, rich in gags, delightful highpoints and paradoxical situations. But above all it’s a film where comedy is a vehicle for the encounter of two different and opposing cultures.” Renato Della Valle, Il Manifesto, Rome
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