Visage(2009) by Tsai Ming-Liang

Anyone can pretty much film anything they want. I don’t mind if an artist films his toilet bowl for three hours without interruption as long as I don’t have to watch it. (Especially in a film theater at the premiere where I am pretty much trapped).

Visage (Face) a film by taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang is probably labelled by well wishers as art. After all, the Louvre in Paris commissioned its production. In my opinion, the film is an exercise in ugliness, morbidity and simply pure boredom. It is fake art for the sake of pretension in a mishmash of meaningless mental masturbatory moments. I do not really want to talk about this film because it means nothing to me.

What I want to talk about is cultural statism. The plain truth is that this film has been produced with money from the tax-payer. The president of the Louvre commissioned the film by using funds from his budget and by pressuring other state cultural funds to support it as well. Why is the Louvre museum suddenly a film producer? What does it know about filmmaking? I do not believe there is a single piece of film hanging from its walls.

This production stems from intellectual impulses made by people who abuse their positions inside our sadly socialist-royalist state apparatus. These ugly princes of the state can pretty much do anything they please with our money and they invariably choose to finance their unsavory minions. I sincerely doubt that Monsieur Loyrette, the president of the Louvre, would invest a single Euro of his already extravagant stipend to bring such dribble to light.

France must stop subsidizing irresponsible art ventures with the money of its hard working citizens. It is time to stop these flagrant abuses of power. This is not culture. This is not art. These are serious misdeeds.

Addendum: This film reeks so much of intellectual swindling that it boasts on its poster the presence of screen legends Jeanne Moreau and Nathalie Baye only to have them appear together for about a minute. Well, in these hard times, I guess everybody needs a handout from the state.