“Narrative art is dead – we are in a period of mourning”; “To scandalise is a right, to be scandalised a pleasure”; “Refusal must be great, absolute, absurd…” Abel Ferrara’s infatuated tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini is littered with such gnomic bon mots, which could apply equally to either director. Like Pasolini, Ferrara has courted both outrage and admiration; he made his name with The Driller Killer, and remains most celebrated for Bad Lieutenant, a film drenched in equal parts with Catholic ideology and censor-baiting exploitation.
This handsomely oblique film focuses on the very end of Pasolini’s life, as he completes work on Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom and makes plans for Porno-Teo-Kolossal, the unmade magnum opus which is here reimagined by Ferrara in startling, elegiac fashion. Willem Dafoe bears an uncanny resemblance to his subject as he drifts through a lovingly realised world of beige interiors and cruisy exteriors, sumptuously shot by director of photography Stefano Falivene. The heady cocktail of politics, religion, blowjobs and murder is catnip for Ferrara, although anyone not versed in the controversies of Salò may leave the film none the wiser. Maria de Medeiros plays actress Laura Betti with gusto, laughing about voicing the devil for Hollywood, while Adriana Asti brings tenderness and anguish to the role of Pasolini’s doting mama, Susanna.
