|
The word "restraint" is not one that we normally associate with Bjork. Nor, given that the diminutive Icelandic bombshell announced her retirement from the medium in 2000, is the term "film". Nonetheless, with the release today of Drawing Restraint 9 - featuring both Bjork's music and her acting - on (very) selected screens in New York and Paris, these associations will be fresh in the mind once more.
While the music world generally either welcomes or weathers Bjork's idiosyncratic approach to art and life, film can be less forgiving. Her swan dress, which could have soared on stage, fell famously flat on the red carpet in 2001. And despite her pocketing the best actress award at Cannes in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark, the critical majority took this to be something of a bad joke.
Her latest, decidedly experimental, project is a collaboration with her
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
One for the art crowd rather than the Oscars, says guy dammann
| |
|
|
artistic and life partner, the New York artist Matthew Barney - who both directs and stars opposite Bjork.
The action, such as it is, takes place on board a whaling vessel. B 'n' B play westerners whose physical environment and bodily form is transfigured through contact with and absorption into the more fluid consciousness of whales. (They actually become whales by the end.)
Bjork's music is appropriately diverse. Its surprisingly subtle Orientalism and occasionally disarming theatricality alternately prod and seduce the mind into accepting the transformational setting. At least, I think that's the intention. But with Bjork, you just never know... 
Drawing Restraint 9 is on limited release in Paris and New York from March 29 and is coming to screens in London in May.
FIRST POSTED MARCH 29, 2006
 Can Spike Lee get away with robbery?
 Reel thing: new wave ganster flicks
|
