In the elegant style of the beautifully-lit Hollywood films of the twenties and thirties, Maria Beatty portrays herself as an extreme vamp. Modelled on film stars such as Pola Negri, Louise Brooks and Marlene Dietrich, the erotic and dominant radiance of these stars is pushed to the extreme. Beatty developed a form of lesbian SM performance-art that is both classical and post-modern, both art and kitsch, both erotic and pornographic.The three short films screened are a kind of trio, characterised by tasteful black & white, on a situation in which a mistress and a slave play a cruel erotic game. The characters have beautiful names like Mistress Morgana & TV Sabrina or Goddess Rosemary & Kitty, and the director herself is always identifiable by her complete surrender to pulling nipples with tongs or sprinkling a vagina with hot wax. All elements of classic SM such as bondage and fetishism can be found in the films. There is a build up in the trilogy best described as ‘from bad to worse’. The last is obviously the hardest and with its references to voodoo sacrifices of baby corpses comprises the least tasteful fantasies. Beatty will be live in Rotterdam for a sequel performance to these three modern heirs to Sacher-Masoch. (GjZ)
