Sweet Movie/Review

Of all the filthy, trashy and disturbing flicks I’ve seen in my 26 years, nothing has ever come closer to actually making me vomit than Sweet Movie. This film is a full on assault to the system, culminating in a barrage of puke, urine and feces that takes a moderately interesting sexual satire to the brink of insanity.

The film opens with a Miss World Virginity pageant hosted by wealthy industrialist, Mr. Kapital (played by Animal House’s John Vernon); a man seeking a bride of the utmost purity to help him run his multinational milk empire. Our heroine, Miss Canada (the lovely Carole Laure), wins the competition by a landslide, impressing the judges with an illuminating glow that emits from her vagina (it gleams like the contents of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase).

Yet, the fairy tale marriage was not to be, especially after Mr. Kapital shows Miss Canada his shiny, golden member and electrocutes her with a stream of urine. From the Kapital compound to Paris, France, Miss Canada partakes in several other sexual encounters, memorably including a muscle-bound black man with “finger lickin’ good” skin and a Mexican pop star who gets his penis stuck inside her atop the Eiffel Tower.

Miss Canada’s story is co-mingled with a more complex tale concerning Capt. Ann, a striking redhead who stands at attention on the deck of her steamboat. From this post, she acts as a siren of seduction for a young sailor named Potemkin and a pack of grade schoolers. She eventually executes these potential suitors, stabbing the sailor in a bed full of sticky sugar and offing the kids after a steamy striptease (which uncomfortably walks the line between art and child pornography).

Our two female leads eventually converge at a small anarchist commune, where sexuality usually doesn’t stop at the old “in-out.” Upon being welcomed into the community, Ann becomes a full participant, while Miss Canada takes on a child-like persona, suckling to a member’s teat and rubbing her face against a friend’s penis.

This whole scenario eventually leads to a dinner party that includes unsimulated vomiting, piss drinking and up-close bowel movements. These acts are presented in such a forthright manner, that it’s not hard to actually be a bit shocked by them, since the film seems to jump the fence between mildly profane to bombastically shocking in a very quick fashion. That willingness to push the limits reminded me of Pink Flamingos, yet, that may be the only connection between the two features, since Pink Flamingos was fun and raucous cover-to-cover, while this little number seems a bit too cerebral and concerned with presenting some pretentious didactic viewpoint.

On a positive note, the film does create some memorable images (Miss Canada’s bath in melted chocolate is quite enticing) and has a nice score, but it’s really hard to grasp a firm statement on human sexuality during all that barfing and shitting. Not that I’m a prude, but I thought the shocking images should have been played strictly for shock, instead of for some obscure reference to human sexuality and Marxist posturing.

Reviewed by Mdeapo