The cat, the reverend and the slave- Second Life
Director Alain Della Negra, Kaori Kinoshita
Countries
Duration 90 min
Synopsis
Right from his first film (Chitra Party, FID 2003), Alain Della Negra had shown a penchant for the true false, the false truth, the power of doubles, the trembling of assignations, the strength and prank of fiction stuck inside the fragile body of documentary verism. Thus it was only natural that he’d found in Second Life an appealing subject. Last year, he and Kaori Kinoshita’s film The Den already explored this virtual zone of exchange, but it only focused on a single tribe, the “Furries”, who singularly embraced their animality. Given that this new country is already huge but tends to get even bigger, and since internet users move, communicate, trade, love, manage companies, create clubs, have parties, in a word, turn their lives into a fantasized double, Della Negra and Kinoshita have a lot on their plates. Here, the audience is to meet a few Furries again, only this time in the company of Goreans with strange sexual habits and, for good measure and to complete similarities with our world, a couple of Christian evangelists. Obviously, this fairly quiet circus is interesting in two ways. First, for the unbelievable exuberance obtained by means of the second life enthusiasts’ patience, in a place where fantasized misbehaviours become acceptable, visible and available: day-today fantasy. Second, for the convincing similarity with ordinary life: fantasy’s daily life. The film investigates the norm’s round-trip back to itself, with a crazy twist, while remaining calmly stunned… and so do we.
Right from his first film (Chitra Party, FID 2003), Alain Della Negra had shown a penchant for the true false, the false truth, the power of doubles, the trembling of assignations, the strength and prank of fiction stuck inside the fragile body of documentary verism. Thus it was only natural that he’d found in Second Life an appealing subject. Last year, he and Kaori Kinoshita’s film The Den already explored this virtual zone of exchange, but it only focused on a single tribe, the “Furries”, who singularly embraced their animality. Given that this new country is already huge but tends to get even bigger, and since internet users move, communicate, trade, love, manage companies, create clubs, have parties, in a word, turn their lives into a fantasized double, Della Negra and Kinoshita have a lot on their plates. Here, the audience is to meet a few Furries again, only this time in the company of Goreans with strange sexual habits and, for good measure and to complete similarities with our world, a couple of Christian evangelists. Obviously, this fairly quiet circus is interesting in two ways. First, for the unbelievable exuberance obtained by means of the second life enthusiasts’ patience, in a place where fantasized misbehaviours become acceptable, visible and available: day-today fantasy. Second, for the convincing similarity with ordinary life: fantasy’s daily life. The film investigates the norm’s round-trip back to itself, with a crazy twist, while remaining calmly stunned… and so do we.