Psychopathia Sexualis

Directed by Bret Wood

Director Bret Wood introduced the Pioneer Theater's premiere screening of his Psychopathia Sexualis, an admittedly ultra-low budget cinematic wrangling with the late-19th century studies on sexual deviance conducted by therapist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (who coined the term “masochism,” among other achievements), by delineating his intended audience as “people who are serious about sex…[and those who] think about it ideologically.” 

Make no mistake—there's enough simulated misogynistic mischief here to justify feminist auteur Catherine Breillat's brazen rage against the dominance of virility. Taking direct cues from Krafft-Ebing's anachronistic methods, Wood constructs several interlocking Victorian-era tales, including attempts to “cure” homosexuality and sadism, and a few documented cases that unfold without medical intervention. 

An often overbearingly brooding aura prevents these short takes from endorsing the ideals of the hermetic social setting, thereby generating a dodgy dialogue with seemingly lurid material. It does succeed in proceeding to interrogate (and indirectly criticize) short-sighted gender constructs, but that didn't stop one viewer from turning to her companion as the credits rolled to titter, “The lesbian scene was hot.” 

Although it follows a chapter-based format and intermittently relies on an unnecessary dry narration to establish each scenario, Psychopathia Sexualis is heavily stylized, an obvious departure from its academic source. The obsessive manifestation of desire and frustrated repression is represented with more pastiche than Breillat or David Lynch would ever care to rely on, but Wood wields derivative devices with a knowing wand. 

An elegantly shot visual reference to the iconic eyeball splicing in 1929's Dali/Buñuel mash-up, Un Chien Andalou, conveys one character's insatiable curiosity to conjure and devour human blood, and the aforementioned lesbian yarn suggests women being treated as child-production systems via a fast-paced montage of human conception that recalls Stan Brakhage's avant-garde documentary Window Water Baby Moving. 

While these itemized techniques merely allow the director to display proper aesthetic training, true formal finesse arrives two-thirds of the way through with an elaborate shadow puppet show that recounts the adventuresome ambition of a necrophiliac. By adopting the language and visual minimalism of a children's book, the segment becomes a striking ode to the inimitable satisfaction of actualizing fantasy.

Krafft-Ebbing apparently considered his patients to be suffering from a “moral cancer,” as the film's handy voiceover asserts, which consequently sets up an epilogue where a former patient appears to overcome his subversive same-sex attraction by living on in a state of remission. 

What gloomy days those were for queer culture. The movie's final moments recalled the superficially optimistic early scenes of Psycho III, where Norman Bates risks life beyond the asylum, temporarily convinced that his murderous proclivities have passed—until the body count commences again. 

Generating suspense with similarly bleak sarcasm, Psychopathia Sexualis is part horror, part exploitation and part ensemble comedy (with a fairly impressive no-name cast). Relying on these conventions gives it a B-movie treatment by way of peep show pretentions. That B, ironically, does not stand for blue.