Page 86 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

tattoos, intestines, urine, sperm, and other fluids and marks associated with the human body (soap,
vaseline, hair gel...). The frequent use of close-ups zooming in on these details allows no escape for
the viewer. There are hardly any establishing shots, backgrounds are mostly underlit, and we are not
even granted a short glimpse of the outside world (not even through a window). Significantly, the
moves from New York to Belgium and vice versa are suggested through miniatures in glass bowls,
safely sealed off from the outside world, and all shots of S. driving her car are set against a moonless
black night. This way the film pushes the viewer onto, even into, S.'s body, making that body the
story world.
Second, the emphasis on the human body also extends to the film's narrative structure.
Technically, S. has a beginning, a middle and an end that adhere to traditions of storytelling, including
a plot construction and a catharsis, but they are a long way from what is conventional. Information
on time and space, for instance, are kept to a minimum, preventing a clear setting. Many storylines
are abruptly opened and shut. A Dutch boyfriend suddenly appears and disappears. We do not even
know where Angie, one of S.'s closest friends, comes from, nor do we know how Marie and Angie
meet up (and break up). It even remains unclear if S.'s father has already been executed or if he is still
waiting on death row. S. is hence unarticulated, immature, unpolished and sometimes unattractive,
much like the film's main character's body.
And even within its story world and narrative S. shows an imperfect, undesirable world, broken
to pieces, kept together only by S.'s awareness and use of her own body. From what we can judge,
the social order ruling our society no longer exists in S.; neither do the symbols we usually attach to
that order retain their function. Church, law, state, morality and common decency are either absent
or stripped of their aura. A Catholic priest, peeping at S. from his confession booth, sees his fantasy
come true (she seduces him) only to be humiliated and killed. Even the ultimate symbolic means
through which social order is pressed, our arsenal of punishments for crimes, is trivialised. Through
his video diary, S.'s father, sentenced to death, plays an ultimate power game with her, revealing how
he molested her as a child, hurting her from beyond the grave.
With this lack of structure and boundaries S. can only fall back on herself. As a subject, she is
traumatised and threatened in her further existence, making her retreat onto herself the only possible
means of gaining any kind of survival. Unconventionally, but true to herself, she captures on video
what she values most in her life, herself. And in her retreat she concentrates on what remains the only
reliable point of reference, her own body. Using her body as a tool in coming to terms with the chaos
around her, S. exploits it to the limit. She dances in a peepshow, parades her body in the subway, films
herself, lets her body be touched by others. In a telling scene, she asks her boyfriend to make love to
her 'so that she doesn't need to see him, just feel him'.
Whenever the limits of her own body are reached, through rape, physical violence, abuse or
otherwise, murder is the only way out. Through the act of murder, literally destroying the body of
the attacker through violent penetration, S. manages to protect her body from continuous invasions
from outside. The periphery of S.'s body, her skin and bodily fluids, play an important role in that
protection. Throughout the film, S. uses them as tools to fend off attacks or to express her emotions.
She urinates on the priest she kills; she closely examines the blood that runs freely from her nose while
she kills her pimp; she caresses her own body and that of Marie with ice cubes, and she 'asks' for butter

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