The debut feature by the Austrian performance artist and sometime filmmaker Valie Export was this avant-garde take on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES (UNSICHTBARE GERNER; 1977), partially scripted by and co-starring Export’s ex-boyfriend and frequent performance partner Peter Weibel, arrived on the heels of several live happenings and short films by Export and Weibel, and remains their most interesting work.
The narrative, such as it is, involves Anna (Susanne Widl), a photographer located in Vienna (not coincidentally the birthplace of psychoanalysis) who happened to be Export’s cinematic alter ego (Widl reprised her role in Export’s subsequent feature MENSCHENFRAUEN). Anna is convinced that peoples’ minds are being taken over by Hyksos, an ancient Egyptian tribe whose spirits have apparently reappeared in the late Twentieth Century.
The victims would seem to include Anna herself. Her shrink believes she’s schizophrenic, but Anna finds that her mirror image seems to possess a mind (and body) of its own, and that her photographic images have an odd double exposure. She also gets into passionate arguments with her selfish boyfriend Peter (Weibel), snaps photos her own excrement and creates a mustache from snippets of pubic hair. Eventually Peter’s self-absorption gets the better of him and he leaves Anna alone in a world that, apparently due to the influence of the Hyksos, is growing increasingly violent and disconnected.
Continuity is virtually nonexistent in this highly experimental film, with much screen time given over to Peter’s obnoxious philosophizing, a lot of miscellaneous discourses on Austrian history, a documentary being filmed by Anna called “WHEN IS A WOMAN BEING A WOMAN?” and numerous clips from Export’s installations and short films (such as 1973’s MAN & WOMAN & ANIMAL). The resulting disjointedness is alleviated somewhat by Export’s visual invention, which is on par with masters of the form like Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren.
Export’s visuals, accomplished with great ingenuity and sexual frankness, include a dream conveyed by an image projected on a screen above a sleeping Anna, a table-full of fish and chicken that suddenly come to life, a refrigerator with a live infant inside it, a walk through city streets with ice skates in place of shoes (a particular obsession of Export) and a retinue of cardboard cut-outs situated around a public fountain. The meaning of all this? I’ll give that over to Valie Export herself, and her comments about how the woman in the Western world “is allowed to function through her body only in relation to man, in relation to society,” leading to a “profound longing for ultimate identification.” If that sounds interesting to you then you’ll probably enjoy INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES.
Vital Statistics
INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES (UNSICHTBARE GERNER)
Valie Export Filmproduktion/Facets Multimedia Distribution
Director/Producer: Valie Export
Screenplay: Valie Export, Peter Weibel
Cinematography: Wolfgang Simon
Editing: Herbert Baumgartner, Valie Export
Cast: Susanne Widl, Peter Weibel, Josef Plavec, Monica Helfer-Friedrich, Helke Sander, Dominick Dusek, Herbert Schmid, Edward Neversal