LIBERTÉ: Grotesquely Arousing, But Mostly Grotesque

French cinema’s fixation with sexuality and nudity is unparalleled across the entire world. Some of the most titillating and sensually arousing scenes in film are from French films – think Luis Buñuel’s Belle du jour. So are some of the most taboo sexual subjects – Louis Malle’s Murmurs of the Heart comes to mind. Albert Serra’s controversial, but undeniably curious Liberté lies somewhere in between those two films. It’s sexual, it’s arousing in some respects, and it’s taboo in others, but overall, it is grotesque and repulsive. Though the film pokes fun at the erotic history of French cinema (and society as a whole), Liberté is also part of it.

A Midsummer Night’s Sex Satire

To say that Liberté is “f*cked up” is a bit misleading. It’s much weirder and comedic than your average gross-out film, but it is also much more subtle and nuanced than any of those. The single most disgusting part of the film, at least for me, was the opening monologue in which a libertine (perhaps a stand-in for Giacomo Casanova) recalls a Robert Francois-Damiens-style execution where a criminal is torn apart by four horses. He describes in detail the screams, the slow elongation, the tearing of limbs from skin, and the manual dismemberment, via knife, of stubborn tendons that would not tear. He delights in the memory as a pervertedly arousing experience.

After that, the rest of the film is pretty mild in its violent monstrosities. The libertines stand around and wait for nightfall until women arrive and then proceed to engage in sexual encounters. Harkening back to Serra’s earlier masterpiece, The Death of Louis XVI, which dragged its slowly-dying royal subject through several days worth of ritualistic healing processes – all of which failed – Liberté is similarly farcical and absurd in its serviceable, slow-paced, and uneventful nature. There are many moments of just men standing near trees rubbing their bulges from the outside of their trousers.

Expert Mood-Setting For Bodily Malfunctions

While some may look at the synopsis and decide that they want to see it out of morbid fascination – and this certainly describes moi, who decided to dive in at 7 a.m. on a Monday for some reason – may be disappointed by the fact that this movie just happens to be about a sexual orgy rather than concerned with the sexuality in and of itself. Serra’s use of lighting, framing, pacing, and composition of confined spaces, influenced by classic French paintings from François Boucher and others, turns Liberté’s porn-movie premise into a quietly brilliant work of absurdist staging.

We’re taken to different spaces with different characters engaging in various forms of sexual debauchery, but most of the physicality is hilariously dysfunctional and buried within the beautifully composed imagery. A few sequences of a woman tied by her hands hanging from a tree branch and having milk poured onto her is perhaps the closest thing the film has to contemporary, mainstream eroticism. Serra is more concerned with the way his characters move and plot their devious fantasies than he is with how they carry them out. They engage with cues and are strictly unsure of their own adequacy (for good reason) despite their horniness.

Conclusion: Liberté

Bourgeoisie culture is tied to the stake here and we begin to see just how pathetic and strange these individuals are as the night wears on. While their libertine values do come from an understanding of sexual liberation as integral to society, it is constantly mixed with a predilection for inhumane violence and torture. Luckily, I guess, their love for disgusting and grotesque forms of sexuality and violence – all of which recalls the outward anima and nightmarish brutality of the Libertine’s in Pasolini’s Salo – is hindered by the fact that they themselves are physically and sexually inadequate in all respects. The only time we see a penis is when one of the members, lying in a wheelbarrow as a woman urinates on him, desperately tries to get it up but can’t.

The moonlight hits the trees in just the right way, the colors just barely glistening amid the darkness of the night all replicate the feeling of erotic fantasy. Yet, in the end, all of this is upturned by the realistic awkwardness of sexual encounters, even more preposterously dysfunctional in the hands of those whose imagination far exceeds their physical abilities. Liberté’s satirical base then exists on the same plane of critique as Serra’s previous films on bourgeoisie culture – despite the riches, the laurels, and the picture-perfect scenario, there is a void existing in these people and their surroundings. No amount of arousal can really seem to fill it.

Have you had the chance to check out this raunchy project? If so, be sure to leave us your review in the comment section below.

Liberté is currently available to purchase for streaming via the Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Screening Room

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