The Visitor proceeds to hang out with various members of the family, helping the dad to capture footage of the son being kicked asunder for the ongoing documentary project, and helping the mum to liberate herself by teaching her how to lactate at will.
At one point, The Visitor sits on the floor, holding an umbrella over his head, as milk sprays around the room and, um, sex fluids drip from between the matriarch's giddy thighs.
I'm guessing you ain't never seen no shit like this in a legitimate feature film before. I know there's all kinds of porn flicks about Umbrella Fetish 7 and Lactation Nation 69 and so on, but this here is a proper cinematic affair, with actors and a real script and social concerns and everything.
How many social concerns were addressed in Debbie Does Dallas? About three, I'm guessing, which is a laughably inadequate number of social addresses.
The rather perplexing point to be made here, is that The Visitor brings unity to the family not by teaching love or understanding, but by convincing them to join in the bizarre, often highly distasteful shenanigans that each member is involved in.
It's like some kind of perverted version of The Fantastic Four, with each member of the family having their own super-power, be it the Incredible Milk-Squirting Mother or Whip-Boy, The Teenage Psychopath.
Film Critic Chris Campion has compared the film to Pasolini's Theorum, what concerned itself with an outsider infiltrating a family unit and, via the sexing and seduction, liberating their repressed libidos.
Visitor Q, however, as Campion notes, heads off in the opposite direction, with the violent influence of the outsider actually working towards bringing these folks together, right up to the stunningly beautiful and yet highly discomforting final sequence, where the mother breast-feeds her two grown-up children in a greenhouse.
As ever with Miike, the whole thing has the potential to be unsettlingly nasty, or even reactionary in both its treatment of women and also that final notion of the family unit being repaired.
What keeps all this at bay, however, is the sympathetic depiction of each individual, however fucked-up, the fact that the men are even more demented than the women, and also the deeply uncomfortable vein of black humour running throughout. It's impossible not to laugh when one character gets, ahem, "stuck" during a bout of necrophilia, but you feel a bit naughty for doing so. I mean, come on, man, this is rape, murder and gross-violation we're talking about here, but oh look, he thought she was getting turned on but no, the corpse just shit over his leg.
Article comments
1 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Hi folks.
Please note;
I've been informed of a controversy arising from the Works De Duke, involving not only his fantasticly incisive critique of Popular Culture, but also the time-stamp on mine posting. The reason the posting-time appears much later than anyone elses who might post at the same time, ie, this one says 17:40 or whatever when if others posted now it might say 13:00, is because most contributors to the site are American, and i am over here in the UK, so my time stamp is right by me, but maybe not by someone in, say, Wisconsin or Zimbabwe. This has absoloutely no effect on posting as far as i can see, and if someone were to post in the video section now, it would push mine down even if the time was "earlier". So, i apologise for any confusion, although the thought that The Duke might be technologically gifted enough to have even considered such a diabolical cheat on purpose does, indeed, fill me with orgasmic pride.
Thanks folks.
By the way, this review sucks, The Duke, i mean seriously.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Amendment to above comment - I just notice now that it does indeed make a difference to the posts afterwards. I will amend the time-stamp on my MT Client thingy to US Time (someone suggest a region?). This will be implemented as of my next post. I honestly didn't know this was having an effect. Thanks to Eric for letting me know
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Just doing a time-check, folks