Madame X - Eine absolute Herrscherin (1978)
Directors:
Tabea Blumenschein
Ulrike Ottinger
Writer:
Ulrike Ottinger (writer)
Runtime:
West Germany:147 min
Country:
West Germany
Language:
German
Color:
Color
Premiere:
Steirischer Herbst 1977, Graz
Festivals:
Filmfestival Rotterdam 1978
Filmfestival Berlin, International Forum 1978
Filmfestival Edinburgh 1978
Locarno 1978
Aperto 80, Biennale di Venezia
Festivals in New Delhi San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago etc.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076349/
On the women's ship Orlando the flags of attack, leather, weapons, lesbian love and death are raised with a beauty which dispenses with a total domination of the viewer's gaze.
The aesthetic is strictly stylized, exhibiting itself without overwhelming us.
Madame X, a harsh, pitiless beauty, the cruel uncrowned ruler of the China Sea, launches an appeal to all women willing to exchange their comfortable and secure but unbearably dull lives for a world of dangers and uncertainties, but full of love and adventure. Women of the most diverse nationalities and walks of life respond to her call. All of their accumulated discontent unites to form a powerful whole, and they sail off with a favorable wind.
What makes the film disturbing is that women willingly succumb to the fascination of rituals of power and - in men's imagination - abandon the territory of innocence and the presumption of women's moral superiority, rejecting the gentleness of other women's films, which, like Agnès Varda's last work, promise 'love without cares'. This film shows not a trace of fearfulness. On the contrary, it is calculated to evoke fear in those who put up resistance against the fascination of this ritualized and totally aestheticized power. ---- Karsten Witte, Die Zeit
Madame.X.Eine.absolute.Herrscherin.Ulrike.Ottinger.1978.avi 
