13 APRIL 1985, Page 34

Cinema

• Sisters

Peter Ackroyd

The writer and director of this Dutch film, Marleen Gorris, is conventionally described as a feminist. This has the advantage, at least, that her prejudices are announced in advance; it also suggests the theme, intimates the style and anticipates the conclusion of her work. There may be no need to see Broken Mirrors at all.

At first sight, however, it might be an ordinary thriller, as a body (female), swathed in blankets, is dumped beside a reservoir and the murderer (male) pro- ceeds to photograph the unfortunate vic- tim. This of course means only one thing: he is an heir to the Playboy centre-fold tradition and, since he 'likes women only for their bodies, has decided that the body itself is enough. The setting then moves to a brothel, the Club Happy House, where other putative victims of male violence and self-aggrandisement are to be found. But despite this apparent analogy there are in fact two distinct plots in Broken Mirrors: one is concerned with the activities of the sex-murderer, and the other with the lives of the prostitutes. Both of them are pre- sented in a powerful if sometimes emetic way. It is really only the attempt to suggest a connection between them which causes a problem.

The good news, if there can be any in a film which takes a somewhat low view (in every sense) of human nature, is centred upon the Club Happy House. It may not be one of those palaces of love typically celebrated by American directors, but there is no doubt that the audience is meant to recognise the warmth between the women — even if in most cases it is

generated by the position in which they find themselves, huddled together against the depradations of a loutish and brutal male world. Men are clearly the enemy — 'They're all bastards. Even the nice ones aren't nice,' as one of the prostitutes explains to a trembling novice in the rites of Venus. There are some who might criticise this as a jaundiced 'feminist' view of the male sex, but it seems a perfectly reasonable remark in this particular con- text. And the justice of the observation is confirmed by the fact that the women themselves are not necessarily presented as angels, fallen or otherwise; they are often quite ready to attack each other, and some of them share the generally male vices of greed and envy.

The Happy House itself is a little study In realism: since it is situated in Scandina- via, it does not possess that atmosphere of intrigue and sinfulness associated with such Places elsewhere, and the business of sex is Conducted in almost too plain a manner. The scenes between the men and women are certainly the best in the film, being quite without melodrama of even the simplest sort, and for those who are in- terested in observing the mechanics of lechery Broken Mirrors is to be recom- mended. Of course the procession of rather dismal male clients is not destined to raise one's opinion of that sex, and some of the language will not appeal to the tender or the timid, but the film does manage to suggest quite powerfully an atmosphere Which combines anticipation with tedium, sex with anxiety. And such scenes have their comic moments, also: the male pro- Prietor wants to install a sado-masochistic section, and announces that 'a man will be coming shortly to paint the walls black'.

But the film is not that funny, principally because Marleen Gorris interrupts these Well-observed scenes with an altogether nastier and more primitive plot in the course of which a sexual pervert humiliates and tortures a middle-aged woman whom he has kidnapped. These passages are most unpleasant to watch, but they will no doubt be excused by some people on the grounds that they are emblematic of the destructive effects of male lust and violence and that, In a world such as ours, there is no qualitative difference between the activi-

ties of the perverted murderer and those of the lecherous clients. Of course it is not conducted as an argument here, but rather Presented as a piece of rhetoric in which Images are used as the cinematic equiva- lent of battering rams.

But at best it makes a dubious point: it displays a blindness towards men not so different from male blindness towards Women, just as the sadistic scenes them- selves are similar to those in the 'video- nasties' which feminists and others despise. But the important point, in a project such as this, is that it represents a failure of the Imagination; the sub-plot of torture and death is too sensationalist and too overtly didactic to exert any claim upon an audi- ence other than one of horror, and in any

case it does no credit to a feminist thesis to assume that it has to be supported by the crudest melodrama. Certainly it damages the impact of the brothel scenes, which offered a convincing if not necessarily authentic account of sexual relations; one is the stuff of reality, the other merely of nightmare. Broken Mirrors could have been a well-defined and well-executed account of that most common and yet most formidable of human failings, lust, but instead it degenerates into a morbid and rather febrile exercise in fantasy. Obses- siveness is banal, from whichever sex it comes, and there was no need for it here.