Link piece for 1996 August

Darke at the Cinema

The Cannes Film Festival awarded a variety of awards this year to films that feature disability as both central and peripheral to their narratives; the most interesting of which, one suspects, will cause the most offence: Crash. The runner's up prize to the Golden Palm winner (the British film by Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies) was a film called Breaking the Waves; set in Scotland it tells the tale of the wife who wishes that her husband did not keep going to the North Sea oil rigs as an off-shore worker, her wish is answered and an accident happens that paralyses the husband so that he can no longer work. The wife then has to endure some form of sexual degradation so that her husband is cured. Sounds like a barrel of laughs from beginning to end! Made by Lars von Trier, a Dane, with a largely Scottish cast, it sounds like ArtHouse fodder that is unlikely to hit your local multiplex.

A Belgian film, The Eighth Day, about two brothers, one of which has Downs Syndrome took the best actor award; awarded jointly to the two actors who played the brothers, one of which is actually an actor with Downs Syndrome. Though called another Rain Man by the British press and assumed to be a patronising recognition of the actor with Downs Syndrome it none the less looks like a film to look out for in the next year or two (if we are lucky) hitting a local, though probably inaccessible, ArtHouse cinema near you.

Crash, on the other hand, made by the Canadian director David Cronenberg, will hit a multiplex near you - however much they are criticised they are usually accessible - as it is full of sex and stars (Holly Hunter, Rosanna Arquette and James Spader); supposedly bizarre sex at that. The Rosanna Arquette character has to wear callipers due to a road accident which makes her an ideal partner for sexual activity (with her callipers on and with her wounds!!). It is set to create a stir, if not a stink, just like the novel of the same name on which it is based, by J G Ballard, did when it was published. I am looking forward to this film - as an ex-calipher wearer myself, though slightly less attractive than Rosanna Arquette in my callipers - as it does seem that it will push the boundaries of disability imagery that little further away from the quaintness or archetypal nature that currently exists. I am sure it will offend many but at least it will challenge and instigate debate about sexuality and disability in the context of how it is usually and generally falsely seen: an act of perversity. See you at the cinema.

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