Successive Slidings of Pleasure’ or — Erotic Viscosity Slipping About all Over the Place?
The plot to Alain Robbe-Grillet’s ‘Successive Slidings of Pleasure’ (1974) is so simple it’s almost as shocking at the film’s copious nudity: a young woman, Alice, is arrested for the murder of her flatmate Nora, detained in a convent then, after a visit from her lawyer, released without charge. And that’s it! Although it’s just as well it’s so straightforward as Robbe-Grillet delivers all this in such a deliberately complex and slippery manner it’s enough to make your head explode.
The film starts just like a French art-house version of ‘Mission: Impossible’ as we see the entire movie condensed into a montage over the opening credits and immediately we start asking questions, such as — Should I be paying attention to any of this? What’s the importance of that egg? Why is there a bed frame buried on a beach? Maybe it’s a game and we’re being introduced to all the pieces? And then there’s the most important question of all — Why the fucking hell am I watching this?!
Meanwhile the soundtrack is fracturing and acousmatising all over the place (his use of sound is as aggressive as Godard’s but serves a different function) which only compounds the vertiginous sense of disorientation. Not only that but we start questioning whether or not Nora, who appears about as animated as a store mannequin, was actually killed or even existed in the first place, especially when she’s also Alice’s lawyer.
Meanwhile Alice is upending male dominated systems of sexual repression — legal, religious, social — by covering herself in red paint and pressing her boobs against the wall in much the same way Robbe-Grillet is upending dominate systems of narrative repression by shoving his nouveau-roman balls in our face, and all this occurs against a heavily stylised setting indebted to Magritte where a missing slice of a cell’s bar is enough to annihilate the structure of the surrounding field of reality (this isn’t exactly Michael Bay we’re dealing with here, folks).
Now all this would be utterly unbearable (and for some people it WILL be) if it wasn’t for several elements that transform ‘SSOP’ into an intensely fascinating and engaging experience.
For one, Robbe-Grillet’s game-playing keep us an active participant in everything we’re seeing and the result of this sense of involvement is incredibly stimulating, something augmented by the fact that the film treats us to some truly extraordinary images the likes of which you’ll find nowhere else. And don’t even get me started on the intricate sound design.
The movie is also surprisingly funny, and not just because Jean-Louis Trintignant’s police detective is dressed up like Inspector Clouseau. For example, there’s a hilarious scene near the end where Alice is brought before Michael Lonsdale’s judge who lies in his bed surrounded by the ruins of law and order (a nod to Orson Welles?), an order she has collapsed and as he frantically attempts to enforce a rigid “narrative” on events she, in turn, obliterates his efforts to the point of causing his total mental disintegration. Trust me; it’s much funnier than it sounds.
There’s another very funny scene, one which demonstrates Robbe-Grillet’s pathological need to constantly have his audience collude with him to justify his own perversions, where the judge hears the noises of what explicitly sounds like furious and outrageous ecstasy (so outrageous that even a dog appears to join in?!) coming from Alice’s cell. Unable to restrain himself he enters only to discover it’s issuing from her record player and is only the “music” she’s listening to. Oh, you big naughty scamp, Alain.
There’s also quite a bit of similarity between ‘SSOP’ and another French film from 1974 and that’s Jacques Rivette’s wonderful ‘Celine and Julie Go Boating’ as both films deal with two women who, by playing games and the use of magical talismans, destroy inert systems of order within an infinite circular structure. The only difference is Rivette’s film contains way less egg yolks, blood, broken glass, bondage and tits.
‘Successive Slidings of Pleasure’ is, quite frankly, unbelievably ridiculous, intentionally provocative and wildly challenging but it’s also endlessly gripping, frequently arresting and, ultimately, hugely invigorating. Just don’t watch it in polite company because they’ll likely call the police.
