For decades, one could hardly venture into an art-house cinema in America without hearing the sonorous voice of the kind of announcers they hire to lull you into believing that a foreign film is somehow not foreign, intoning, "Vincent Canby of The New York Times says that Elvira Madigan is the greatest love story ever brought to the screen." The late Vincent Canby once stated that he was foremost a reporter, and in service to that mission, Canby would on occasion inform his readers about the wretched qualities of some fourth-rate film up to the moment he left the theatre.
One cold morning in the Mission, I sat with my first Diet Pepsi of the day in the Roxie watching an incredible piece of French tripe. Called Three Dancing Slaves (and after one-and-a-third viewings, I'm still in dark about what the title refers to), the film seemed to be set in some minimum-security penal colony where a coven of slutty, butch boys has been sentenced. The boys are giving each other haircuts with electric trimmers, and an old crone is complaining about how they are squandering her electricity. One of the boys, Marc, already a skinhead, insists on shaving the stubble. Then Marc gets into an argument with an unpleasant older man concerning a wild stallion somebody is training in the corral before them. It's an inexplicable moment, garnished with that non-sequitur type of pseudo-philosophical dialogue that runs riot through this type of movie.
Blah, blah, blah. Three of the lads, brothers in a house run by a Captain Bligh of a dad, start fighting with each other over the disposition of their dead mom's ashes. Finally, Marc, who is kindly disposed only to his dog (it appears to be a pit bull), is kidnapped by a local drug ring, beaten and forced to toss his dog over a cliff. I draw a firm line at gratuitous violence against animals, especially in brain-dead pretentious movies. Making a mental note that the director should be horsewhipped, I left the theatre 30 minutes into this debacle. If I had only filed my review then, you would be spared reading this one.
Even the worst movies have their moments. Three Dancing Slaves' occurs at about the 68-minute mark, where two adorable lads, a French boy with tattoos and an Algerian with a beautiful mane of hair, engage in some suggestive verbal foreplay, and then go hang-gliding. It takes all of three minutes, and if you time it properly you can catch the scene on a potty break from some other, better film.
By the way, the guilty ones in this crime against celluloid are director/co-writer Gael Morel and co-writer Christophe Honore, whom you may recall as the director of Ma Mere, another shaky effort at homoerotic hijinks that was rescued by a brave performance by the charming Louis Garrel. Alas, not even a dozen of France's sexiest screen gods can save Three Dancing Slaves from drowning in its bad intentions. Opens Friday .