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Rep Cinema Feature

Rating: NNNNN


black wave pleasuresSWITCHBOARD OPERATOR (Duçan Makavejev, 1967) has plenty of art-filmy things to recommend it, but let’s start with some superficial pleasures. It has a plot. It’s got suspense. It’s funny. And it’s only 69 minutes long. Makavejev, leader of Yugoslavia’s Black Wave of filmmakers, was trying to tell us something about personal freedom amid the crumbling totalitarian regime. That message sneaks in as his heroine waltzes through endless construction zones and flips on a TV show about the October Revolution while nuzzling her date. But the film also stands as a surprisingly modern love story between a rat-catcher and a beautiful switchboard operator who is found dead inside a well. The minutiae of their affair — there are long, enjoyable scenes of her doing little more than baking him a pie — contrast with the creepy realism of her autopsy. We learn things after she’s dead that colour our ideas about their relationship and contribute to our mounting dread. Makavejev suddenly throws in a poem about rats or an academic lecture about sex or crime. These interludes act like commercial breaks, only they sell nothing except ideas that linger long after the movie’s over. It’s Monty Python meets Hitchcock. NNNN (Friday, March 2, Cinematheque)Kim Linekin

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