My most memorable cinematic experience of 2024 has to do with a frivolous, excessive erotic comedy. The new film The Visitor notorious underground and queer cinema director Even in a big city like Berlin, Bruce LaBruce is only shown in a few arthouse cinemas. Normally I would probably have watched it with two or three people in a tiny hall. But because of this year’s Berlinale, everything turned out differently.
A dirty Berlinale cinema visit like no other
The Berlinale occupies a special position even among the largest film festivals. In addition to accredited press visitors, there are also public performances with regular ticket sales. This means that the films shown themselves are often of secondary importance. Almost every Berlinale screening is automatically sold out due to the reputation and importance of the festival.
So on February 18, 2024, I mingled with all the other people at The Visitor screening with my Moviepilot press pass. The film was shown on this date at Berlin’s Cinestar Cubix on Alexanderplatz, in Hall 9 with 517 seats. And practically every single person in what was by far the largest hall in the cinema was occupied that Sunday.
You can watch a trailer for The Visitor here:
The Visitor – Trailer (German) HD
In this cinema I usually watch blockbusters like John Wick: Chapter 4, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and Gladiator II. But this time I sat crammed in between hundreds of peoplewho probably had no more idea than I did about what we were about to watch.
In The Visitor, Bruce LaBruce transfers the Pasolini classic Teorema – Geometry of Love to contemporary London. Here, a naked refugee gets stranded on the Thames and ends up in the estate of a wealthy family, where he causes a lot of (sexual) chaos.
Specifically, this means that the film An estimated 65 percent consists of hardcore scenesin which all the characters (some of them relatives) have sex with each other all over the place. Through rooms illuminated in the brightest colors and strikingly displayed social criticism (“Open Borders, Open Legs!”) The Visitor is one of these so-called “art porn”. Only it was shown on a huge multiplex screen in front of 500 people.
Film festivals are their own parallel world
I quickly had a lot of fun with The Visitor, whose queer-anarchic joy in pure nonsense is sometimes reminiscent of John Waters films, especially because of my surroundings. Even though the number of people leaving the cinema early was not very high, the silent irritation was constantly noticeable.
Around me sat the middle-class, intellectual retired couple as well as excited groups of girlfriends or middle-aged men without a companion who didn’t move an inch or show any kind of emotion throughout the entire film – whereas in The Visitor they barely did the Jesus dildo unpacked became.
Bruce LaBruce’s film celebrates the free development of pure desire and explodes all body norms and gender identities for an excessive fireworks display of sex and drive. At the same time, The Visitor was a pleasantly punky ricochet in the context of a film festival like the Berlinale itself.
When the director himself came forward for a Q&A discussion at the beginning of the credits, the people in the hall almost demonstratively streamed out of the cinema. Maybe they had to rush to the next Berlinale film, maybe they were just frustrated, annoyed or annoyed by the film.
The Visitor showed how cinema can influence time and space
For a good 101 minutes, The Visitor has transformed this multiplex cinema hall, which otherwise stands for pure escapism and entertaining entertainment, into a strange new place. Above all, the bizarre erotic comedy created a general feeling of togetherness and connection that would otherwise never have been possible.
All the people around me and myself, no matter how different everyone present was, were influenced by the combination of festival and film merged into a bizarre cinematic body.
So it doesn’t surprise me that months later I still think about this idea of The Visitor from time to time. She was once again proof that a film in the cinema is not just a film in the cinema. But also an experience that can work through the screen and do amazing things.