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The films of Jesus Franco are the ulti­mate acquired taste in the world of cult cin­ema.  To some, the pres­ence of his name on a film means “run for the hills.”  To oth­ers, his blend of demented artsi­ness and cheap smut breeds a fanat­i­cal devo­tion.  The one thing that both camps can agree on is that he has left an indeli­ble mark on the his­tory of left-of-center film­mak­ing: with over 200 films to his credit, his legacy won’t be going away any time soon.

Franco remains as pro­duc­tive as ever today.  Despite dwin­dling bud­gets and the replace­ment of movie cam­eras with dig­i­tal video, he cranks away at his own cut-rate style of cin­e­matic delir­ium with the same com­pul­sive energy.  Unfortunately for fans, the free­dom brought by cheap dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy has caused their idol to get even more insu­lar and bizarre in his work.  The most recent result of his cur­rent video-based style is Paula-Paula, a film that will have even the most hard­core Franco apol­o­gists strug­gling to explain its self-indulgent lunacy.

In fairness to Franco, he bills Paula-Paula as an “audio­vi­sual expe­ri­ence,” which is a fair descrip­tion of its length stretches of jazz-scored visu­als sans dia­logue.  However, he also cred­its Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde as an inspi­ra­tion and it’s tough to under­stand where that came from.  Paula-Paula’s faint wisp of a plot has some­thing to do with Paula (Carmen Montes), a crazed young woman who is appre­hended by a cop (Lina Romay)  for the mur­der of her lover/sex-show part­ner, also named Paula (Paula Davis).

After an extremely brief inter­ro­ga­tion, what remains is… anti-narrative mad­ness.  Paula strips down and does an extended nude dance, tells some sort of psychedelic-damaged fable and then the film set­tles in for its main order of busi­ness: a danc­ing scene that becomes a lengthy soft­core bump-and-grind ses­sion between the two Paulas, filmed in a slow-motion style that makes seem even length­ier and more self-indulgent than it actu­ally is.  The scene ends with a bizarre bit of vio­lence then cuts to a curi­ous title-card that stands in for a proper end­ing.  Roll credits…

It’s hard to judge Paula-Paula from a nar­ra­tive film stand­point because every­thing about it flies in the face of con­ven­tional crit­i­cal con­cerns.  There’s no story, no char­ac­ters or any kind of struc­ture or theme that a viewer’s mind can lock onto.   Instead, we get 65 min­utes’ worth of Franco see­ing how far he go with a video cam­era, an apart­ment, four actors and a hand­ful of musi­cal com­po­si­tions by deceased composer/former Franco col­lab­o­ra­tor Friedrich Gulda.  As most who have seen the film will point out, Gulda’s play­ful, jazzy music is the best thing about the film — but that alone isn’t enough to keep a viewer engaged.

In short, Paula-Paula feels more like a video instal­la­tion than an actual film:  it’s easy to imag­i­na­tive it doing well as visual wall­pa­per in a sleazy hip­ster bar some­where in Europe.  However, it will become an endurance test if you try to sit and watch it.  Even the extended les­bian sex scene is numb­ing.  It’s sim­ply the com­pul­sive cre­ation of some­one who likes to play with images and sound — and is com­pletely uncon­cerned with engag­ing his view­ers in any way.  If this is the future for Franco, per­haps the time has come for him to hang up his cult cin­ema shoes.