Unless a picture shocks, it is nothing. ” “
Where the surrealists found the absurdity of this titular masked
criminal profoundly inspiring—the authors wrote sequential
chapters at a novel-a-month clip (for 32 months) and were
soon killing characters off in one chapter‚ only to have them
unintentionally alive the next—the breakneck production of
this swashbuckling print-and-film sensation spurred Rheims
and Bramly to pen “Alice In Wonderland lost in a dirty world”
stories based around the Fantômas-ian twins B and R (yes‚ it’s
partly biographical). to wit: R‚ aka Rose‚ goes missing‚ and B‚
deftly played by Belgian model inge Van Bruystegem‚ goes
undercover—as a Geisha knitter‚ blind accordionist‚ orgasmic
cabaret dancer‚ and Rose herself—to investigate whether her
sister was abducted‚ sold into prostitution‚ sucked into a terrorist
ring or simply married to a lover.
As the “Annie Leibovitz of France”‚ who regularly works for the
likes of Elle and Chanel‚ Rheims gained exclusive access to
shoot a bondage-clad‚ knife-wielding B on the roof of the palais
de Justice‚ a tchotchke-crowned “Queen of paris“ beside the
observatory dome‚ even older twins hovering above the empty
racks in the old Bibliothèque nationale de France. (An exhibition
of the series is also on view at the new La Bibliothèque nationale
de France (BnF) through July.)
What ultimately emerges are 212 luscious‚ highly eroticized black
and white tableaux that heavily reference Magritte‚ Dalí and
Duchamp (from Etant donnés to his female alter-ego Rose sélavy‚
who inspired the project’s title). throw in ethereal cityscapes of
paris‚ Dr. (Azzedine) Alaïa psychoanalyzing naomi Campbell‚ a
vagrant subway doyenne (Charlotte Rampling) who unlocks the
riddle for B‚ with their son Virgile Bramly masquerading as Fantômas
himself‚ and the result is a painterly suite of hypnotic images that
intentionally defy a strict narrative understanding. though Bramly’s
lush‚ if at times photographically frozen‚ 97-minute noir feature
lover’s perspectives on an old affair—in the end we are left with
provides a compelling dialogue with the stills—like dueling ex-two works that beg for repeat inspections‚ which invariably recall
Duchamp’s artistic maxim: “Unless a picture shocks‚ it is nothing.“
Rose is raw electricity n Michael Slenske, Rose C'est Paris by
Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly, Taschen taschen.com
