“One of the strangest films that I’ve ever seen in my life…and incidentally, I made it.”
So claimed Poland’s late Andrzej Zulawski, a few months before his February 2016 death, about the Portuguese/French co-production COSMOS (2015). It followed his penultimate film LA FIDELITE (2000) by fifteen years, with the muted critical reception granted that effort and the severing of his relationship with longtime muse Sophie Marceau causing Zulawski to quit filmmaking. He was lured back by the Portuguese mogul Paulo Branco (a 20 year Raul Ruiz collaborator), who offered him the chance to adapt Witold Gombrowicz’s 1965 cult novel KOSMOS, an offer Zulawski couldn’t pass up.
…the chance to adapt Witold Gombrowicz’s 1965 cult novel KOSMOS, an offer Zulawski couldn’t pass up.
Witold (Jonathan Genet) is a troubled young would-be novelist who together with his equally feckless pal Fuchs (Johan Libéreau) embarks on a stay in a scenic family guesthouse. In the forest leading to the house Witold finds a dead bird hung by the neck, the first of several odd happenings.
That Witold is fated to descend into madness is foretold early on, in scenes like a nighttime one in which he becomes inexplicably terrified of the dark (despite the fact that the room he’s in is brightly lit), and another in which he senselessly kills a cat. Witold is further triggered by his infatuation with another of the house’s residents, the attractive—and married—Lena (Victoria Guerra).
It certainly doesn’t help Witold’s mental state that everyone around him is completely unhinged, tending to burst into sudden spastic convolutions and equally sudden lapses into catatonia. And as if all that weren’t enough there’s a maid (Clémentine Pons) with a severely deformed top lip that would appear to symbolize…something.
Critics, after severely underrating LA FIDELITE, vastly overpraised this film, due (I’m assuming) to the fact that it was its director’s final work, and also because not many of those critics were evidently familiar with Zulawski’s filmography, meaning COSMOS seemed quite new and innovative to them (an Artforum reviewer proclaimed it “Chaotic, bright, eerie, and crazed,” which could be said about any of Zulawski’s films). For longtime Zulawski buffs, however, the film is medium strength at best.
His signature style is very much in evidence in the atmosphere of barely contained insanity, although the madness is a bit more subdued than in Zulawski’s other films (something Zulawski’s longtime colleague Daniel Bird suggests was intentional on the part of the filmmaker, who was offended by the “hysterical” label slapped on his work). COSMOS is also more fragmented and experimental than we’re used to from Zulawski, who frequently has his actors break the forth wall to speak directly into the camera, allows the behind-the-scenes lighting equipment to be fully visible, and in the final scenes intercuts footage from two separate endings (a nod, perhaps, to the fact that Witold Gombrowicz was notorious for his non-endings).
Zulawski’s feel for location was impeccable, transforming the Cliffside villa in which the entirety of the film takes place into a veritable gothic cathedral, and his work with actors was equally magisterial. It’s been claimed that Zulawski utilized a form of hypnosis on his performers, and the actors in COSMOS certainly appear to be hypnotized, all emoting in the same crazed manner. An impressive feat of direction, to be sure, even though it ensures that none of the performers, including newcomers like Jonathan Genet and more seasoned players like Jean-François Balmer (SWANN IN LOVE) and Sabine Azéma (A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY), ever stand out.
Vital Statistics
COSMOS
Alfama Films/Leopardo Filmes
Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Producer: Paulo Branco
Screenplay: Andrzej Zulawski
(Based on a novel by Witold Gombrowicz)
Cinematography: André Szankowski
Editing: Julia Gregory
Cast: Jonathan Genet, Jean-François Balmer, Sabine Azéma, Johan Libéreau, Victoria Guerra, Clémentine Pons, Andy Gillet, Ricardo Pereira