CFF screening - short review - NAKED OPERA by Angela Christlieb

Taking a page out of the direct cinema handbook by following the ethos of choosing the right person and following his quotidian normality, through Angela Christlieb’s Naked Opera we explore a wealthy businessman’s life of carnal indulgences and Mozart’s Don Juan.

Marc Rollinger is an eccentric intellectual whose expensive peculiarities, pompous loquaciousness and penchant for male escorts – a portrayal that seems so far removed from these times of economic crisis as to make him seem far removed and alienated. Christlieb frames him with sophistication and a collected style that conveys the luxury that surrounds him.

Initially, we almost naturally react to him derisively, perhaps because his nature makes him look as if he had stepped out of Oscar Wilde’s wittiest take on upper class superficiality. Yet, as the film progresses, so does his humanising process. That is when we come to know of his vulnerabilities and loneliness and understand the nature of his lust as well as his need for cameras to capture what he himself refers to as ‘the truth’. Despite this, it remains uncertain all throughout whether there really is a truth to be discovered or even worth discovering. However, this is in fact something that Christlieb herself is concerned with and she reveals such concerns by sometimes exposing elements that remind us that it is a film after all.

Nevertheless, it’s virtually impossible not to fall for Rollinger’s natural magnetism, especially when he takes these occasional trips to the dark side in way not too unlike Alice in Wonderland – if Alice had had millions to her name. But aside from all this, Naked Opera’s principal theme, much like Don Juan, could be he theme of seduction – the illusion of seduction whether it is through paid companionship or through the camera lens.