Mia Goth, Not a Phase.
"Body Genres" & Extreme Cinema in X, Pearl, and Infinity Pool.
“My son and I agree that the fun of ‘gross’ movies is in their display of sensations that are on the edge of respectable. Where we disagree - and where we as a culture often disagree, along lines of gender, age, or sexual orientation - is in which movies are over the edge, too ‘gross.’”
-Linda Williams in “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”
With the release of Infinity Pool, many have crowned Mia Goth the newest “scream queen.”
The title of “scream queen” was first awarded to Jamie Lee Curtis after her debut performance as Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and a trio of horror films subsequently released in 1980: The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train. Being dubbed the “scream queen” may have pigeonholed a less dynamic actor. However, in the ensuing decades, Jamie Lee Curtis’ talents transcended the confines of the horror genre. She has given incredible performances in action films, comedies, dramas, and Activia commercials.
Since her cinematic debut in Lars Von Trier’s pornographic opus, Nymphomaniac: Volume Two (2013), Mia Goth has emerged as one of the most talented, fearless performers working today. Despite an apparent throughline in Goth’s budding career, with a filmography reflecting an affinity for the horror and sci-fi genres, Goth delivers a captivating performance every time she graces the screen. At twenty-nine years old, Mia Goth is on a hot streak that ought to launch her to the highest echelons of stardom, and perhaps it will, but I fear her exceptional talent is flying under the radar.
Goth’s trio of recent releases, X (2022), Pearl (2022), and Infinity Pool (2023), suggests Goth’s penchant for “extreme cinema” that falls within the “bodily genres,” often regarded as “gross” and exceptionally “low-brow.”
“...melodrama, horror, and pornography [are] the tripartite group of films that constitute the body genres. In all cases the spectator is invited to viscerally share in the experience of ecstatic screen-bodies. Melodrama might elicit tears, pornography intends to sexually arouse, and horror might startle us, making us jump from our seats, gasp, cringe, or avert our eyes at the sight of gore.”
-Aaron Kerner and Johnathan Knapp in “Extreme Cinema: Revisiting Body Genres”
X : The Low-Brow Hat Trick
In X, writer/director Ti West sets out to prove “it’s possible to make a good dirty movie.” He embraces “lowbrow” film genres (i.e. horror and pornography) to lampoon the moral panic “dirty movies” provoke, foregrounding issues surrounding female sexuality: objectification, liberation, youth, obsolescence, unfulfilled desires, religious judgment, and inter-generational jealousy.
“There is no accounting for taste, especially in the realm of the ‘gross.’ As a culture, we most often invoke the term to designate excesses we wish to exclude… Alone or in combination, heavy doses of sex, violence, and emotion are dismissed by one faction or another as having no logic or reason for existence beyond their power to excite… [however,] there may be some value in thinking about the form, function, and system of seemingly gratuitous excesses in these three genres.… by thinking comparatively about all three "gross" and sensational film body genres we might be able to get beyond the mere fact of sensation to explore its system and structure as well as its effect on the bodies of spectators.”
-Linda Williams in “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”
Set in 1979, Maxine (Mia Goth) and her friends plan to shoot a porno on a rural Texas farmstead. The horny bohemians run afoul of the farm’s geriatric owners, Howard and Pearl: a randy old woman capable of shocking violence (also Mia Goth, in heavy prosthetics).
For an exploitation film inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, X is a remarkably compassionate film. Victims are undone by their willingness to assist senior citizens. No character fits within a one-dimensional archetype. The people in this movie are more than bags of blood waiting to be punctured. Even the murderous old fogies evoke sympathy. In her eighties, Pearl is animated by a basic desire for intimacy that, due to cardiac concerns, Howard cannot satisfy.
There is a shift around the film’s midpoint. The film’s first half foregrounds the aesthetics of pornography, titillating the viewer as the bohemians go about producing their porno. While Pearl lurks, unbeknownst to the youngins, danger mounts. Before the film’s second half plunges into horror, the movie slows down for a moment of reflection.
Maxine articulates in 1979 what Pearl never could during her upbringing: “Letting outdated traditions control how you live your life will get you nowhere.” The buxom, blonde Bobby-Lynne (Britany Snow) laments, “one day, we’re gonna be too old to fuck,” and concludes, “we turn folks on. And that scares ‘em.” It’s a concise thesis: moral outrage stems from a societal repression of sexual desire. X confronts viewers with a corollary: elderly bodies turn you off, and that scares you. Geriatric bodies are employed to evoke disgust. The horror of X is built upon the realities of aging, a fear whose universality enables West to evoke empathy for Pearl, the film’s monster, in a moment of musical melodrama.
“Screams, grunts, crying, the utterances associated with pain, like laughter or sex, signify within the sensorial system, and thus “voice” nothing. The cinematic, with its aesthetic arsenal, might “articulate” or elicit that which has no intelligible “voice,” through the form of the medium (color, audio design, composition, editing), rather than through conventional communicative modes (narrative)…”
-Aaron Kerner and Johnathan Knapp in “Extreme Cinema: Revisiting Body Genres”
Bobby-Lynne sings a moving rendition of “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks while a split-screen montage contrasts the warm potential of youth with the cold reality of wrinkled skin and withered possibilities. The bohemians sip beer with a smile, unfazed by lyrics explicitly warning them of the passage of time. Meanwhile, Pearl sits in a dark room, staring into her vanity mirror, its surface riddled with old cosmetics. Unable to turn back time, nothing can make Pearl feel beautiful. She can, however, inflict her pain on those that she envies. Her oppressive regret tugs at the heartstrings, even as she slaughters innocents for the crime of youth.
Pearl: A Maniacal Melodrama
Pearl is a Freudian melodrama rendered in the technicolor pastiche of Hollywood’s heyday, with particular deference to The Wizard of Oz. It’s an aesthetically novel and narratively simple “x-traordinary origin story” that dovetails nicely with X despite divergent approaches: X serves visceral horror whereas Pearl is a figurative psychodrama.
Mia Goth plays Pearl, best described as a wicked Dorothy of the south: a tornado of vulnerability and instability vacillating across emotional extremes. In 1918 a global pandemic and WWI rage on. Pearl’s husband, Howard, fights overseas. In his absence, Pearl lives on a farmstead with her stern, German mother and infirmed father who requires constant care. Pearl dreams of soaring over the proverbial rainbow and onto the silver screen. Her mother considers her ambitions stupid and selfish. Upcoming auditions for a touring dance troupe offer Pearl a chance at a better life. Squandering her youth caring for a family she resents, Pearl begins musing, “If only they would just die.” In Pearl, cold and warmth clash to create a beguiling whirlwind of deep-seated discomfort and genuine pathos.
Pearl’s origins don’t offer any earth-shattering revelations. Instead, the story unfolds neatly. What makes Pearl a gem is Mia Goth’s acting prowess, allowing the sympathy evoked in X to blossom into empathy. While violent rage roils under the sunny facade of a dutiful farmgirl, her disturbed psyche is expressed via numerous metaphors.
Early in the film, Pearl is sent to get her father’s medicine, a bottle of morphine from the local pharmacy. In defiance of her mother, Pearl uses the remaining money to slip into a movie theater. She is swept away by the girls dancing in the pictures, aided by a swig of Daddy’s morphine. She meets the theater’s projectionist, a handsome fella, who offers her free screenings anytime. On her ride home, Pearl is drawn to a scarecrow hanging in a cornfield. She dons the black hat atop its head, releases him from his post, and begins to slow-dance. Fantasizing about the projectionist she screams, “I’m married!” at the lifeless scarecrow. Then, desire overtakes her and she straddles the scarecrow until reaching sexual climax. No, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We’re in Pearl’s world: where windswept whimsy and romantic grandeur are steeped in dark desire.
The film builds to a show-stopping monologue. When, with downcast eyes and runny makeup, Pearl confesses, “I’m worried there may be something real wrong with me,” viewers may respond with a resounding “No duh.” However, Goth’s delivery, dripping with heart-wrenching sincerity, renders the deeply disturbed woman eminently relatable. Pearl’s desire for intimacy clashes with a fear of rejection, of being seen as defective and frightening. It’s a fear innate to interpersonal relationships, certainly one that I’ve experienced. While Mia Goth bares her soul, time ceases to be. There is only Pearl, and she’s the most captivating character in contemporary horror cinema.
Infinity Pool: A Dip into Extremity
Infinity Pool, directed by Brandon Cronenberg (son of David Cronenberg), is not a movie that you watch. It is a movie that happens to you, an experience inflicted upon you. Ultimately, Infinity Pool proves to be an engrossing, refreshing cinematic delight for those willing to take the plunge.
James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is a novelist plagued by writer’s block. Desperately seeking inspiration, James and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) travel to the resort community of Li Toqa. There, James meets Gabi Bauer (Mia Goth), a fellow traveler enamored with James’ first book, and her husband Alban. The Bauers take the Fosters on an ill-advised, off-resort excursion that ends in vehicular manslaughter. Suddenly ensnared in a foreign justice system, James faces the death penalty. However, for a handsome fee, there is a process whereby James can have a “double” executed in his stead.
Recut to narrowly avoid an NC-17 rating, Infinity Pool certainly dips into the excesses of extreme cinema. Savage violence and kaleidoscopic orgies punctuate Cronenberg’s fine-tuned phantasmagoric trip into the depths of hedonism, masculinity, and privilege.
“it is not necessarily as simple as documenting copulation, or presenting the spectator with a ‘disgusting object’ that elicits the sensorial experience; rather, it might include the mobilization of cinematic aesthetics—in a word, stylized… We might suggest, then, that what differentiates the films that we call “extreme cinema” from that which is merely violent or pornographic is an emphasis on cinematic form.”
-Aaron Kerner and Johnathan Knapp in “Extreme Cinema: Revisiting Body Genres”
From the moment the film begins, the film stimulates viewers with a thumping score, minimal but effective in imparting dread that is poised to envelop you. We are shown the resort, stylistically modern with each frame composed symmetrically. Then the camera begins to smoothly spiral through the air, imposing a sense of disorientation that warps familiar geometries into a non-euclidean spectacle evocative of M.C. Escher.
Infinity Pool is an intellectually engaging text structured around themes of justice, accountability, identity, violence, and rebirth. Brandon Cronenberg also manages to deftly infuse a metatextual commentary on “nepo-babies” without being heavy-handed or seeming defensive. Extreme though it may be, this is a film crafted with intention. After witnessing a scene of graphic violence Em says, “It’s really disgusting, that you could just sit there and watch it happen.” She was addressing James but she was talking to me, the enraptured viewer.
Whether or not you intend to see the films discussed herein, keep an eye on Mia Goth. She’s worth watching.
Next week we’ll reflect on something more “high-brow.”
Thank you for your time, my fellow film freak.