Fando y Lis (1968)

The National Film Theatre is sort of doing a season (more of that below) of films by the Chilean-born, Mexico- or Paris-based surrealist man of all seasons, Alejandro Jodorowsky.  I was not however tempted by the previously rarely screened cult favourites "El Topo" and "The Magic Mountain" since I have seen both several many times and have my own copies, even if it did take some years to find a non-Japanese copy of the latter without white bouncy balls covering the many genitals on display!  However I went there like a shot when I discovered that they would be showing Jodorowsky's first feature -- one that was considered lost for many years and seldom available-- the very, very weird "Fando y Lis" which premiered at the Acupulco Film Festival in '68, provoking a riot and causing the festival to be suspended.

Naturally I am very pleased to have finally viewed this early example of guerilla film-making, shot basically at weekends on an incredibly low budget.  One is reminded of other first films which followed the same route, like David Lynch's "Eraserhead".  Lis is paralyzed from the waist down and her lover, Fando, wheels her through the barren, mountainous landscape on a small cart shared with a phonograph and a drum.  They are looking for the mythical city of Tar which is meant to be an earthly paradise.  As they progress through the wilderness they encounter an assortment of unlikely pilgrims -- from debauched socialites through a pope being nursed by a vastly-pregnant woman, through white-haired matriarchs gambling for the attention of a young man, through a pack of transvestites, through a doctor seeking fresh blood for a blind man.  In other words, Planet Weird!  I did think that the director was trying just a little bit too hard to be subversive, but the end result was fascinating nonetheless, and one could certainly spot mystical themes revisited in Jodorowsky's later and slightly more polished movies.

I did say above that this was not really a season of his films since it did not include his best-known later feature the remarkable "Santa Sangre".  Nor did it include two of his last films which I somehow think will continue to elude me.  One of these called "Tusk" is apparently about the relationship between a girl and an elephant.  The mind boggles!  His most recent was made in 1990 and apparently released in 1994 and is called "The Rainbow Thief", starring -- get this -- Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, and Christopher Lee.  I thought for a long time that this film could not possibly exist with that cast without being better-known, but at least the hundred-odd people who rated it on IMDb have seen it.  So where the heck is it and why has it disappeared?  However awful it may or may not be, I want to decide for myself.