Reply #12: uh [View All]

There is apparently an entire film studies course worth of thought about "exploitation cinema", so presumably, for starters, it exists, in learnèd opinion.

Who determines what it is? Well, I guess we can all have opinions. Some would be more informed than others, some would be less biased than others ... just as in the case of most any opinion.

And even if a film can be considered "exploitation", the fact that such films are the subject of university courses, as demonstrated above, suggests that there is still some value to them.

Hardly. It demonstrates that they exist, and that the phenomenon of their existence is worth studying.

Is there value to Nazism, simply because there are university courses for studying it?

Call me whatever names you want, but I have no patience for "artificial art officials" whether from the right wing or left.

Well ... you could tell that to someone it might be relevant to.

Me, I have no patience for people who form and shout opinions about things without knowing anything about them.

I think it's rather important to know what is actually informing Serge Losique's decisions in this matter. I haven't actually even noticed him speaking glowingly of the artistic merit of this film. I do know that he's rather desperately in need of money, and that screening a film likely to attract large audiences regardless of its worth as anything at all is one way of getting it, and the attention that brings in audiences and money.

There really is a difference between a film festival and the local cineplex. If a film festival is showing an "exploitation" film, NOT in order to further serious study of the genre or fulfil some other purpose of a film festival, but purely in order to make money, and if it is doing that at considerable expense to real live people, that's a perfectly valid reason for criticizing the film festival.

If Karla is NOT an "exploitation" film, it might be a perfectly good candidate for Logique's festival. It could be a serious exploration of evil or of character, or a well-done fictionalization of a criminal event in the police procedural genre, and so on. There might still be perfectly good reasons not to screen it.

Some of my favourite films would belong in this category.

And did any of them exploit the horrific personal experiences of your neighbours for profit, without regard for them?

Are you really not seeing a potential difference between Karla and "Thelma and Louise"?

Apart from being about real, still living and not fictional people, the film just really obviously (I'll say confidently, without having seen it or read much of anything about it) is not Sophie's Choice ... if it were, I wouldn't expect to see a TV sitcom star in the lead role. Not that such a person is "inherently bottom-drawer"; I'd just expect a serious treatment of such a serious subject to attract rather more serious talent.


From the CBC's review:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/karla.html

... It didn’t help that director Joel Bender’s filmography includes such titles as Jennifer is Dead and Gas Pump Girls. Media reports also noted that the actors cast as serial killers Homolka and husband Paul Bernardo were Laura Prepon (That ’70s Show) and Misha Collins, performers associated with the medium of television — as if this distinction somehow made them inherently bottom-drawer. ...

Clearly, exploitation is in the eye of the beholder, but Karla has merits that make it something other than just utter sleaze. Despite a limited budget, it is well shot and is buoyed by a solid cast, especially its two leads. ...

... As horrid as this story may be, it is inarguable that many great filmmakers have made films about murderers that were based on true stories — Hitchcock (Psycho), Scorsese (Taxi Driver), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs), among others. Many are now regarded as important, groundbreaking cinematic art. Some, such as Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam, were released despite the protests of victims’ families. My verdict is that Karla is neither a masterpiece nor a disaster. It has its strong moments, but feels much like a better-than-average movie-of-the-week (though perhaps a bit too extreme for the mainstream TV networks).

I'm really not sure why someone like Serge Losique would be wanting to show "a better-than-average movie-of-the-week" at a venue like the Montreal World Film Festival ... other than as a participant in the exploitation.