This review may contain spoilers.

Physical Media #1

BLACK MOON (1975)

dir. Louis Malle

Black Moon is the first film I’ve seen from Louis Malle’s body of work. Suffice to say, this movie was quite the experience I rather enjoyed. Would I recommend it? Well, it really depends on what you want out of it as it is one of those types of films that are very, very ambiguous (while watching the supplements that came in the Criterion release, Louis Malle himself said he does not really understand it either). Although I’m not sure you could really spoil this type of film, I will be adding a spoiler tag regardless as this is my interpretation of the film.

The movie starts with out main character Lily (Cathryn Harrison) confronting a military blockade. In this film there seems to be an all out war against the sexes, something I’ll come back to later. Lily manages to escape before being captured and after some other obstacles she finally reaches this isolated farmhouse, where the film will mostly take place in. Here she meets three distinct characters: the Old Lady (Therese Giehse), Brother Lily (Joe Dallesandro), and Sister Lily (Alexandra Stewart).

The movie plays out pretty strangely at this point, things happen for seemingly no reason and characters act bizarre. Here is what I believe the movie, or at least part of it, is about: the film is really about Sister Lily. Our main character Lily is the personification of Sister Lily’s childhood. It’s a mix of past and present. I believe Sister Lily lived through an abusive childhood that she has become accustomed to and we are shown this through how Young Lily is treated throughout the film.

The Old Lady is the abusive mother of both Sister Lily and Brother Lily. She constantly fights, berates and takes advantage of Lily (sexually as well). This goes on for a while, and seeing how they live in a very isolated home Lily began creating her own friends through the farm animals and plants, giving them voices and a new language to speak. When their mother passes away, Sister Lily is stuck with Brother Lily who I believe also takes advantage of her, seemingly paralleled with the war of the genders occurring out in the countryside (he also talks in the film through merely sensually touching the person).

At the climax of the movie the gender war has reached the farmhouse which is when Sister Lily decides she’s had enough of the abuse and attempts to kill Brother Lily. As they wrestle in the field bombs begin going off and men and women dawning military gear begin fighting each other. The film ends soon after with Young Lily bearing her breast to feed her unicorn friend (I know, I know).

This is what I took away from the film. Am I wrong? Maybe. Maybe there is no real rhyme or reason to any of the events, but I can’t really enjoy a film that way. Black Moon is ambiguous enough that everyone will have a different take. I still don’t know what the naked kids with the pig represent (if anything at all), nor who the unicorn is meant to be. That being said, the film has a fantastic atmosphere and is shot beautifully by Sven Nykvist (The Sacrifice, Fanny & Alexander, and Scenes of a Marriage). It’s also not very long at 100 minutes (1hr 35mins), so it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

If it sounds like your type of thing, I’d say watch it. If you’re not very keen on films with no real sense of direction, maybe prepare yourself or just skip this one entirely.