Maria Beatty
By Alice Pfeiffer
Maria Beatty photographed by Gilles Uzan
MARIA BEATTY BRINGS ropes and handcuffs into art-house cinema and film noir into female erotica. The New-York-born filmmaker is a pioneer of erotic noir, a hybrid genre that borrows elements from porn, surrealism and graphic, amoral Grand Guignol horror. Her work elevates hardcore to new heights in its portrayal of bondage and S&M, while paying homage to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Luis Buñuel and Peter Greenaway. As well as directing, Beatty also produces, edits and occasionally acts in her works, and has 28 films under her (studded) belt. In 2007, she won the Best Director award at the Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival for Silken Sleeves, a sophisticated exploration of dominance and submission. She released her first feature, the noir thriller Bandaged, in 2009 and is currently working on Café du Diable, an independently funded project that will depict decadence in an apocalypic era.
Alice Pfeiffer What was your aim when you initially decided to show fetishism on screen? To offer an alternative to the typical porn film or to introduce cinema connoisseurs to bondage?
Maria Beatty Neither of those; it’s something that came over organically, that crystallised on a personal level. I was searching for my identity through my art. In the beginning, I was very attracted to renegade women who were using their bodies, especially in the sex industry, and I took that as a reference and an inspiration. But I also came from an artistic background, so I already had that aesthetic sensibility when I was going into the body and fantasy.
AP I don’t know if you’ve read Judith Butler but but like many gender theorists, she claims that porn is “hate speech” against women. There is the idea that lesbian imagery is often just for men to get off on.
MB That’s true; I don’t deny that. There is a long history of erotic female imagery aimed towards the male gaze. Some of these fantasies I actually enjoyed and so I expanded them with my own vision and my own desires, a woman’s desires. But it wasn’t an intentional political statement. I was always asked to be in fetish films directed by men and produced by men, and I always rejected them because I felt I had the talent and the capability to do my own thing, and there was also the fact that I desire women as well. That’s kind of a double-edged sword, because the lesbian fantasy is kind of a cliche, the ideal male fantasy.
AP How does the fact that you’re a woman affect the way you film other women?
MB I think that I come from a different angle. The point of view is from below, which is very rare in male-produced porn and S&M films. So that’s the first thing – I think that I was playing with a point of view, and at the same time I was empowering the woman underneath. So her desire is representing a twist and a turn in the dominance and the submission; it’s a very subtle way of showing the submissive person as the one who’s really controlling. Normally, the woman is the one who is dominated. But also, in the industry, it’s a marketing tool: the women are not real, there’s no real chemistry happening, they’re automatons, they’re produced in a mechanical prototype of what a woman is expected to be for the male gaze.
AP Is that why you choose women who are already couples?
MB I never really choose women for my films anonymously. I film couples who have a natural chemistry and a passion for each other. There is something genuine about that, so it makes it much more stimulating and real and engaging, rather than watching a scenario that’s been replicated millions of times. I use the scenario as a skeleton, a springboard, and once I have that in place I discuss ideas with the women involved, and it’s a collaborative effort at that point to really pinpoint what they want too, what’s going to excite them, what’s going to drive the erotic dance between them. Then it unfolds in a very spontaneous way. At that point, when I’m filming, I try to step back, let it flow and see what comes out of it. I think that’s much more exciting and there’s a lot of room for unpredictability and naturalness between the two, and I don’t want I need to explore and deal with and work to manage that, otherwise it becomes sterile and staged. The build-up is very important for me – the foreplay, the sensuality of it, the kissing, the touching – and I try to build it from there.
AP Why bondage?
MBTo tell you the truth, it’s my own personal exploration, where I came from and where I am going, and dealing with certain things in my closet that I’m opening up. It’s not just the physical aspect; it’s also the psychological. Fetishism is about obsession and to me obsession is something that I need to explore and deal with and work through, and then move on to something else. You have to get to the end of the tunnel to get to the next step. If you think about bondage, about pleasure and pain, it’s a metaphor: a metaphor for the desire for the woman, a metaphor for abandonment, a metaphor for dependency, all of those kinks that we have inside that prohibit us from looking forward. I’m working on the kinks in the metaphor, unravelling the knots in the bondage – I tie the knots in order to unravel them. I don’t know if I’m being too esoteric, but it’s a journey. Also, when you cut off the senses, you enhance the mind, the mind explodes. Pain is a way of dealing with all of these metaphors, but also a way to get to the other side, which is pleasure. I think you cannot really appreciate ultimate pleasure until you feel and go through pain. It’s a metaphor for life;it’s the yin and yang.
AP Music is a big deal in your films. For instance, [contemporary classical musician] Mikael Karlsson composed the sound track to Bandaged.
MB Music is essential in film, and it works best when it channels an emotion that has already been constructed through the material of the story and the spirit of the film. I’m careful not to over-saturate and abuse the music. It’s written and composed in response to circumstances that are already filmed, and then pieced together and eventually interwoven with the imagery and rhythm of the film. There’s a continual exchange and feedback between me and the composer during the audio post-processing. It’s fascinating how we can see things in a different way through the soundtrack, as subtexts and subliminal connections.
AP You have another feature film in pre-production now, right?
MB Yes. It’s going to be about a very strange underground club in New York, but it takes place in an apocalyptic era – sort of right now, when the stock market is crashing and the environment is tumbling. There is a deterioration of the exterior world, and then there is this haven for people to go to express themselves. There are couples who come into the club and it’s a way for them to open up emotionally, to tell the truth. They come to decide if they want to die, to kill each other, to have sex, to release everything. So it’s the madness within and the madness without, and both reflect each other. It’s not your classical narrative film.
AP You have a website that you’re using to raise funds to produce the film. Why not produce it in a more traditional manner?
MB This idea came to me after realising how essential it is for me to stay completely independent, without involving producers with various agendas and contrasting visions. The online drive is a funding platform that can spread the word. It helps to motivate people who want to see the project come to life, and it helps to create a collective feeling. It’s the new way of financing independent cinema and projects.
AP Finally, coming back to your point about empowerment through bondage: if bondage is a reaction to phallocentrism, would bondage be obsolete in a world free of male domination?
MB No, because I think everyday life is S&M. It’s a power struggle from the minute you wake up to when you have to go outside and deal with the real world. The world is S&M; it’s about top and bottom, it’s about control, and that’s just the way our society is made up. It’s a construction that I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of – it keeps the flow of humanity going. I’m not just criticising the male gender, women can be just as dominant. It’s a part of human nature. Elements of control, of domination and submission, in the bedroom or in film – I think you have to respect that it’s fantasy. It’s when it enters the real world that it becomes dangerous. §
