Review of The Raspberry Reich (2004) by Sarah F — 31 Mar 2005

I love Bruce LaBruce. He's one of the only filmmakers out there who are willing to make pornography with style and plot, not to mention the fact that his films actually have something to say. I love him even when his films fall apart, which they often do. The fact that I still love him after [i]Raspberry Reich,[/i] an amazingly audacious misfire of a movie, tells you how much respect I have for him.

A bizarre blend of neo-marxist satire, gay porn and U2's "Zooropa" tour, [i]Raspberry Reich[/i] stars Suzanne Sacchsse as Gudrun, the leader of a revolution against capitalism in general, the rules of which she seems to be making up as she goes along. She sends her gang to kidnap the son of an important business leader in hopes of freeing all of those imprisoned for terrorist acts, and her loyal minions are pleased to do her bidding.

Even when her bidding involes sex, which it does most of the time, as she claims that "heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!" (To which one member quips, "I thought opiates were the opiates of the masses.") So she makes her would-be boyfriend ("The revolution is my boyfriend!" she claims) go down on another gang member, and forces the another member of the gang to have sex with their captive on film in order to prove his loyalty to the cause.

We also get sex in the trunk of a car from two guys handcuffed to each other (who somehow manage to get their shirts not only off, but back on again), a guy fellating a shotgun and masturbating with a pistol, references to Marxist theory, Wilhelm Reich and "Mrs. Dalloway"(!) and an arguement as to which store would be the best to steal from for the good of the revolution. For those familiar with other LaBruce films, most recently the entertaining [i]Skin Flick[/i], this is familiar territory, as explicit sex and social satire mesh together in a blend that, if properly handled, might be something good.

Sadly, [i]Raspberry Reich[/i] never quite becomes that good. LaBruce seems to have enough ideas for a 20-minute short, but Reich is four times that length, and the film often repeats itself. LaBruce's editing style is on overdrive as well, as dialogue that the characters speak is often repeated as text on the screen, and frequent faux-subliminal flashes reading things like "ESCAPE" and "REVOLUTION" range from annoying to really, really annoying.

Not content to fail as a satire, [i]Reich[/i] falters as a porn film as well, as the acting is so stiff and dubbed-looking that few of the relationships between characters come off as anything vaguely human. The idea of straight men being seduced into homosexuality by the promise of terrorist-chic is a good one, but the guys involved require so little convincing that sexual chemistry isn't even really bothered with.

There's good ideas swimming around in [i]Raspberry Reich[/i], and the ridiculousness of Gudrun's hypocricy almost makes it worth viewing (why, for example, does she never have sex with a woman?) just to try to figure out if her character is insane or just being a manipulative bitch, but they are, as Spinal Tap so aptly put it, "swimming in a sea of retarded sexuality." Shame, too, as up until now, LaBruce hadn't cranked out a movie I was dissatisfied with. Still, failed audacious porn is better than mediocre generic porn, so it's worth a look for the art fag set if the expectations are kept low.