NYFF: Getting High With Staying Vertical
Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 2:48PM Here's Jason reporting from the NYFF on the new film from the director of Stranger by the Lake.
With a movie like Staying Vertical it's tempting to go look up the definition of "queer" in the dictionary and start off with that - that would do a lot of my work for me. Because make no mistake about it - Staying Vertical is queer. It is queer as in it is strange, and it is queer as in it is not precisely heterosexual. It is that kind of off-putting gay guy in the corner of the party who's laughing at something even though nobody is talking to him. It's a good thing that I am that gay guy at every party, so me and Staying Vertical, we kinda hit it off.
Everybody won't. (The bane of my existence, y'all.)...
Director Alain Guiraudie, who turned the rhythms of public gay cruising (and I should look up and share with you the multiple definitions of "rhythms" here) into a singular and surprising art-house success with Stranger By the Lake in 2013, has birthed a movie with Staying Vertical that people will find more difficult than that previous turn at playing Honcho by way of Hitchcock...
Staying Vertical is built up from its own center of gravity, and it should come with a warning sign outside the theater that it might cause disorientation (and oh right pregnant women should definitely not be allowed to ride it - you'll know why when you know why.)
Vertical tells the story of Leo, just a French lad wandering the countryside writing a screenplay, who does as French lads do and impregnates the local farmer's daughter, fights zombie hordes of homeless people, and has green tentacles attached to himself in the forest for spa slash psychology treatments. All while taking care of a baby! He's like the psychedelic version of an Eighties Super-Woman, both business and family, having it all, but exploded.
Staying Vertical is built up from its own center of gravity, and it should come with a warning sign outside the theater that it might cause disorientation (and oh right pregnant women should definitely not be allowed to ride it - you'll know why when you know why.)
In its own way the film reminded me of Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster, in that the world these characters inhabit is following its own set of rules that the audience has to suss out as the film zig-zags along. Only I'm not sure I understood Vertical's anything-but-straight through-line by the end quite like I did to my marrow with Lanthimos' masterpiece. Does it all add up? Are these mysteries for mystery's sake? As Pink Floyd (whose music is integral to Vertical) once said, "And after all we're only ordinary men." And then they got really stoned.
Reader Comments (4)
Director Alain Guiraudie, who turned the rhythms of public gay cruising (and I should look up and share with you the multiple definitions of "rhythms" here)...
Or "cruising." ;-)
The title made me think this was about sobriety. Or screwing in an alley.
Particularly inspired.
Saw this movie at Melbourne Film Festival a couple of months ago. No movie festival feels like a true movie festival until you have had your first large shot of genitals on the screen, so this one kicked it off for me. :-) Really liked it (more than STRANGER actually).