Friday, October 16, 2020

The Awakening of Annie (Zygmunt Sulistrowski, 1976)

At times, I had The Awakening of Annie (known under many other titles including The Virgin of the Beaches and Annie - The Virgin of St. Tropez) at a solid D, other times a shaky A. So I'll wuss out here and give it a non-committal B+. But this one goes into the so-transcendently-boring-it's-fascinating category. Part travelogue (at one point it becomes a literal slide show on Brazilian farming!), part softcore porn (with barely hardcore inserts), part action film, part narrative-jettisoning art damage, The Awakening of Annie has more parts than Frankenstein's monster. It's a film for weaving in and out rather than watching, the kind of movie you wake up in the middle of (even if you haven't been sleeping!) and stare at for several moments before drifting back out. The last fifteen minutes are the best, a bargain-basement Aguirre coda that goes completely off the rails and achieves a baffling avant-garde stasis. The Awakening of Annie hails no discernible audience. But everyone should catch a chunk of it from the corner of their eye if ever beset with insomnia. 

Grade: B+

And look - it features Screech's dad.


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