Sue de Beer's latest video, "The Quickening", 2006, is a morality tale
without a moral, a murder mystery with no solution. It's set in Puritan
New England - although de Beer seems unconcerned with creating the
realist mis-en-scene of the conventional period piece. The movie puts
incongruity to use as a narrative strategy. When John Denver launches
into the second stanza of "The Eagle and the Hawk" following the
unceremonious hanging of one of the characters, the music is jarring,
but the effect is oddly felicitous.
The story of "the Quickening" is fairly simple, beginning and ending
with the unexplained murder of the two female leads (both of whom are
chased, stabbed, then hung by an unidentified creature). These events
themselves are bookended by excerpts, narrated by the male character
(Travis Jeppesen), from Joris Karl Huysmans's 1903 preface to his 184
novel "À Rebours" (Against Nature). In a voiceover immediately following
the demise of the first victim, Annika Line Trost, Gina V. D'Orio reads
a passage from Johnathon Edwards's fiery sermon "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God" (1741), strenly excoriating the "wicked unbelievers," and
in the scene that follows, a mysterious, hypnotic machine triggers a
dream sequence in which D'Orio dances with forest animals in a leafy
clearing.
As those familiar with de Beer's work might expect, "The Quickening's"
plot is less a motor for character development than elaborate window
dressing for the artist's referential games. Tropes and imagery from her
previous works make appearances. The dancing fauna and falling glitter
reprise sequences from "Black Sun", 2005, while walls full of fanciful
obscure lettering and ornate floral sketches bring "Hans & Grete",
2002-2003, to mind. The sound track and the recasting of Jeppesen, the
male lead of "Hans & Grete", also establish links to other works.
"The Quickening" is de Beer's first single-channel video since her early
experiments in the medium, "Making Out with Myself", 1997, and the
gorgeous, unsettling "Loser", 1998; it is also her first foray outside
adolescent ennui. Gone is the dialogue between two screens, the
materialized play between split personalities and mirrored perspectives
that marked her last four movies. For "The Quickening", this fracture
has been folded into the work's internal structure, sublimated into
psychedelic lighting and kaleidoscopic effects.
Vestiges of immaturity remain. The shaky, handheld camerawork
illustrates de Beer's stubborn resistance to critical exhortations to
"grow up", while the clumsy exaggeration of plosives in Jeppesen's
speech recall high school theatre. The movie walks the line between
Edwards's stoic certainty in God and punishment and Huysmans's
meandering path towards faith, while the mash-up that constitutes her
particular style - Dario Argento's "Susperia" (1977 by way of David
Lynch's "Twin Peaks" (1990 - 1991) with smatterings of Kenneth Anger and
of Gregg Araki's "Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy" (1993-97) - equivocates
between slick production and a winking crudeness.
De Beer's irresolution is both her strength and her vulnerability,
allowing her to float between genres without settling down, though it
can also leave her work feeling aimless. Recurrent images of ships and
Thanksgiving iconography offer a hint of colonial critique, but the
suggestions are all too fleeting. "Truly it can be said that beauty lies
only in mystery. The beauty is the mystery," Jeppesen concludes in the
movies final two lines. If thats true, de Beer has a lot of beauty on
her hands, but she's still unsure where to take it.