Period Piece

That's a sausage. (Snausage?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Period Piece (2006) is an aggressively ugly work of art.  Behind it, though, is a keen moral intelligence. Directed, written, edited, scored, and produced by Giuseppe Andrews (actor Joey Andrews). The film is a (very) loosely connected collection of stories (think Short Cuts on meth) about thwarted desire. In the place of sexual connection with other humans we get sex with teddy bears, an octogenarian who pantomimes sex with an imaginary girl (whose voice we hear), Barbie dolls erotically posed, a fetishized dead pig, a father and son who gaze at porn together fantasizing about women and the possibility of sex, and a hooker whose clothes never come off. Half the cast seem to be mentally ill homeless men. But I have no idea where Andrews recruits his actors or what incentives he offers them to expose themselves (both physically & psychologically). One gets a strong whiff of Fellini from Period Piece, especially Casanova (where the title character's sexual dalliances end with soulless sex with an automaton). The best parts of the film are the interludes with the badly stop-motion animated tater tots. I honestly don't know what they're doing in this movie, but they are weirdly hilarious.