To fully appreciate the work of Jack Smith-director, it is necessary to get acquainted with all his works (according to IMDB there are 7). After all, his figure aroused the interest of such film critics-intellectuals as Jim Hoberman and Kirill Razlogov. I too, I confess, for 5 years dreamed of watching “Flaming Creatures”, but, having read it, I came to the conclusion that this is a very mediocre avant-garde, where the entourage of thrash is poorly guessed (unlike his short “Scotch”, as if the predecessor of “Idiots” Lars von Trier). But the real disappointment can be experienced when watching a full-length (to put it mildly - a projection of more than 1:40!) film by Smith called Normal Love. Of course, the plot of the film does not correspond to its title, and beautiful shots, in the spirit of pop art, make you sincerely regret the absence of illuminated film and black and white shootings here.
It may seem that Jack Smith is emulating Kenneth Anger, one of the key avant-gardeists of the United States of those years, filming some rituals using color filters. But very soon you realize that “Normal Love” is nothing but a performance stretched for almost 2 hours, the father of which is recognized by Jack Smith. And the director also borrows surreal aesthetics, filming an avant-garde melodrama about another panopticum of freaks. You remember almost with admiration the interesting film by Jesus Franco “The Vampire from the Isle of Lesbos”, where the aesthetics of performance are successfully combined with the surreal development of events.
In general, we have a pseudo-avant-garde, some Graphomaniac work, which is easy to dismiss as nonsense. On the contrary, the true avant-garde stirs the imagination, offends Puritan morality, and goes beyond, showing us that there are no limits to art. One can see the Bloodsucking Freaks or the avant-garde Hell of the Cannibals once to remember them in great detail years later. In Smith’s work, there is nothing to cling to not only the heart but also the mind. And the presence in the frame of a man of dubious talent Andy Warhol only confirms a seditious idea for someone. Both Warhol and Smith filmed only for themselves, suffering from incontinence, as well as for a narrow party where they were extolled by the aki gods. It is not surprising that performance and pop art quickly exhaled, turned into growths on the body of art, but brought the same Warhol multimillion-dollar fortune. But what vanguard can a well-fed, satisfied bourgeois do? What should he protest against, and why? Because of all the party Warhol cinematically most interesting Paul Morrissey, engaged, in fact, the same deconstruction of genres, but did it with much greater skill.
4.5 out of 10