SANTA SANGRE: Showtime At The Psycho-Sexual Surrealist Circus

There are plenty of direc­tors who use sur­re­al­ism in their work.  From Luis Bunuel to David Lynch, this mode of artis­tic expres­sion has been explored many times in many ways.  However, no one has ever done it quite the way Alejandro Jodorowsky has.  This Chilean-born film­maker has worked in a num­ber of medi­ums over the years (every­thing from exper­i­men­tal the­ater to comic strips) and has cre­ated a hand­ful of films along the way that still have the power to fry the synapses of film­go­ers who think they’ve seen it all.

Santa Sangre is per­haps the best intro­duc­tion to Jodorowsky’s work, mar­ry­ing his adven­tur­ous style to a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller sto­ry­line that is the most acces­si­ble premise in any of his films.  The plot revolves around the tra­vails of Fenix, who is played by two of the director’s sons: Adan Jodorowsky dur­ing the character’s child­hood scenes and Axel as an adult.  He is born into a cir­cus envi­ron­ment, torn between a phi­lan­der­ing knife-thrower father (Guy Stockwell) and a mother (Blanca Guerra) who is prone to reli­gious hys­te­ria (she wor­ships the title saint, inspired by a mur­dered and muti­lated teen, and leads a cult for it).

Fenix tries to please both par­ents but when his father has an affair with a tat­tooed lady (Thelma Tixou), his men­tally frag­ile mother responds with vio­lence.  The father dies but not before sev­er­ing the mother’s arms with his knives.  Fenix ends up spend­ing the remain­der of his child­hood in a men­tal hos­pi­tal.  When he is an adult, his mother reap­pears and leads him into a sur­real cycle of mur­der and the­ater.  Meanwhile, Fenix’s lost love — Alma, a deaf mute girl he met dur­ing his cir­cus days (Faviola Tapia as a girl, Sabrina Dennison as an adult) — searches for him… and she may be his last hope at escap­ing the wak­ing night­mare his life has become.

As odd as the above syn­op­sis might sound, it can’t pre­pare you for who eccen­tric the over­all expe­ri­ence of Santa Sangre actu­ally is.  Jodorowsky packs the film with all man­ner of digres­sions and strange flour­ishes that make the story unfor­get­table: high­lights include sev­eral scenes where Fenix “sup­plies” the arms for his mother, match­ing her com­ments and actions with an impres­sive dis­play of arm-based mim­ing,  and a sequence where Fenix and his fel­low men­tal patients (all of whom have Down’s Syndrome) being led down a vice-ridden street as they dance with trans­ves­tites to the sound of mambo music(!).  This film also fea­tures the most eroti­cized knife-throwing act you’ll ever see, the kind of thing Freudian types will have a field day with.

Simply put, there is a stun­ning sight or moment every few min­utes in this film and Jodorowsky’s skill at orches­trat­ing these event ensures that it feels oper­atic instead of self-indulgent.  That said, Santa Sangre isn’t all excesses.  Between the out­bursts of the sur­real, Jodorowsky fash­ions a com­pelling psy­cho­log­i­cal tale that is some­times quite mov­ing.  He uses his sto­ry­line to com­ment on the vicious cycle of par­ents pass­ing on their psy­cho­log­i­cal  trou­bles to their chil­dren.  He also man­ages some mem­o­rably thrilling scenes, includ­ing a knife-murder sequence where one nasty char­ac­ter suf­fers a fate that rivals the best set­pieces in an Argento or Fulci film.

Finally — and most impor­tantly — Jodorowsky gets strong per­for­mances from his cast:  Adan Jodorowsky gives an amaz­ingly emo­tional per­for­mance as the young Fenix while Axel Jodorowsky’s work as the adult Fenix does a bril­liant job of phys­i­cally express­ing his character’s inner tor­ment.  It is also worth not­ing that the elder Jodorowsky son and Guerra do amaz­ing work in the scenes where his arms are used to “com­plete” her body, com­bin­ing mime and per­for­mance art into a sin­gu­larly stun­ning whole.  Elsewhere, Tixou offers a per­for­mance as the tat­tooed lady that makes her one of cult cinema’s most stun­ning ‘bad girl’ characters.

The end result is truly a trip, in both senses of the word, and it is never at a loss for a new way to sur­prise the viewer.  Some peo­ple like to debate Jodorowsky’s work, ask­ing whether he is truly a sur­re­al­ist or just a poseur who dresses genre trap­pings up in forced weird­ness.  One view­ing of Santa Sangre will ren­der that dis­pute mean­ing­less.  There is a point at which an artis­tic work goes so far off that beaten path that it is both deadly seri­ous and a put-on all at once.  Santa Sangre starts at that point and drags the audi­ence by the neck, kick­ing and scream­ing, into the psycho-sexual beyond.  If you are inter­ested in the outer fringes of nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing, this a movie you must see.