Madame X

A militant film, albeit one of a highly unorthodox kind. Ulrike Ottinger's lesbian feminist pirate adventure deliberately flouts every rule of orthodox film syntax, and is so uneventful and repetitive that many may well find it impossible to take. The evident aim is a destruction of traditional spectacle, and a construction of a new way of presenting women on film. The pirate plot is a high-camp pretext (and not in any sense a vehicle) for 'heroic' new images of women. The most obviously impressive scenes are those involving Yvonne Rainer as an artist disillusioned with the artocracy around her, who takes off for the high seas on roller skates, pausing only to declaim her disillusionment (as recorded in her notebooks) to a passing TV interviewer.