Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)

Genre: Avant-Garde Animation Comedy (Czech Republic, Switzerland, UK) 

Starring: Petr Meissel (Faust), Gabriela Wilhelmová

Directed By: Jan Svankmajer (Little Otik • Alice)

Overview: We follow the lives of six individuals all linked in some way - a way besides the obvious strange kinks they each secretly have in order to please themselves.

Take for example the letter-carrier, a small woman who seems to judge everyone she encounters, yet when given the chance she hides in one of the buildings on her route in order to roll a loaf of bread into little balls, saving them for an unknown purpose. A mustachioed man in an elevator seems taken by a lady's foxtail scarf to the point that he cuts a piece off and takes it to his workshop; a bald man buys pornography, yet somehow we know his obsession with it is different than that of most.  As we slowly learn what exactly these people are doing, we discover that they each have a special fetish and that they drive our cast of characters to live out their lives in pursuit of these fulfillments.

Wow, you MADE that machine? What a great hand Job!

Performance: 8 Cinematography: 8 Script: 7 Plot: 7 Mood: 8

Overall Rating: 76% (No Need to Hoard)

Aftertaste:

Not typical stop-motion Svankmajer, Conspirators of Pleasure fails in delivering a dramatic climax several times. As six characters have a secret fetish, we have six opportunities to be enlightened, shocked, appalled or impressed by turns of events, surreal twists of fate, or psychological obsession. Half the characters had interesting arcs yet the other half merely had unfulfilled potential. I had hoped that since the theme was about character interrelations, like Magnolia or Happiness does, we would find that as time goes by the relationships between the characters would grow or change. More importantly the evolution of the fetishes themselves often fail to live up to the wonderfully nurtured suspense that each act builds up for our characters.

The trip was far better than the conclusion, but as a fan of this man's works, I'm still pleased enough to recommend it to fans of the genre, that being the 'Czech art-house surrealism with weird fetishes' crowd.

Yep, you guys'll love it.