Bluebeard's Castle / a novel by Anna Biller
I first encountered auteur/cinéaste Anna Biller when she screened her Cal Arts thesis film Three Examples of Myself as a Queen (1994) at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice, California. The film was a tour-de-force - a straight-faced hilarious surreal camp fantasy musical that Biller wrote, starred in, directed, costumed, composed and set-designed. Around that time I was also lucky enough to catch her live stage production, The Lady Cat, in which she starred as a be-whiskered furred sexy feline. Those glorious offerings have since been followed by films such as The Hypnotist (2001), A Visit from the Incubus (2001), Viva (2007) and The Love Witch (2016), each of which has been a gleaming iconic/iconoclastic constellation in the Anna Biller firmament.
Now, years later, I've just finished the audio version of Biller's debut novel, Bluebeard's Castle (Verso Fiction, 2023). Fascinating, complex and interwoven with stealth historic, cinematic and literary hat-tips, the novel absolutely felt like an Anna Biller production. Biller's indelible mise en scène over the years has been so gloriously signature with its unapologetic embrace of nostalgic high fashion and cinematic kitsch that the novel unspooled in my head as a dazzling film punctuated by bits of quintessential Biller-esque theatrical side-business: naked men painted white posing as statues; costumed dancers performing a sensual pas-de-deux between a caterpillar and a butterfly.
The book is a true-to-form romance novel that follows the erotic evolution of romance novelist Judith as she is drawn ever deeper into the gravitational pull of a devilishly handsome cad. But Biller subverts the genre by confronting the reader with the nightmarish horror of the narcissistic demonic, all the while seducing us with inescapable eroticism, daring us not to turn the page (or keep listening to the audio - convincingly read with Gothic intensity by Samantha Hydeson).
The juxtaposition of romance novel genre and rigorous razor-sharp psychological insight of Bluebeard's Castle made my head spin. In vivid Biller-esque fashion, the dark momentum of the work made me feel like I was being strangled with a gold satin cord and lowered into a red velvet lined coffin in a symbolic death. This is a filmmaker's novel with big dreamlike technicolor impact and Hitchcock-like precision.
I read somewhere that Biller had originally pitched Bluebeard's Castle as a film and, rather than wait for the capricious wheels of cinematic fate to spin in her favor, took to the novel form and made it happen.
Here's holding out hope that this scintillating work gets a green light. Would be epic.
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
areudirty
andulkaphoto
romaincrisis
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
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