Further and Particular

This film dovetails two obsessions: a man's with woman's sexuality, and a film director's with the nature of the camera's gaze. Needless to say, there is a lot of repetition. The camera approximates Memory, first that of a young boy, and of the sexual encounters arranged for him by his mother, and eventually that of an old man, with corresponding fragmentation. Many of the images of sexual stereotypes, and the games they play, are arresting if over-long, but too much of the film is taken up with commonplace profundities ('Truth is change') and doubtful maxims ('Love is reality transformed into a sport') spoken directly into the camera. References to Hitchcock's Rope and Welles' The Lady from Shanghai serve mainly to highlight the discrepancy between what the film demands of the viewer and what it gives back in the way of ideas and entertainment.