You Look Better Still

Lying in ambiguous territory between performance art and lowbudget drama, You Look Better Still features two young American artist/filmmakers who play elaborate variations and games upon identity and sexuality in a series of individual acts: some performancebased, some fragments from a modestly scaled melodrama. Collaborating together during a residency at Le Fresnoy, Alexis Hall and Hanna Hellsten have developed a featurelength taped piece that explores their exchange of identity, their role playing and competitiveness. And as two beautiful young women they also exploit their appearance and sexuality to explore the relationship between the spectator and their onscreen presence, their often provocative and sensual behaviour. The dynamic of the piece shifts between the two of them and the voyeuristic viewer to create a highly selfconscious but playful and roleplaying dynamic, complete with musical moments Given the static camera, addressing the spectator and the play on identity and role playing heavily tinged with sexuality and with the ostentatious wearing of wigs and changes of costume, the atmosphere of the film is sometimes Warholian a comparison that is entirely legitimate, in view of the quality of this work. Turning their low budget and their strange modern concrete environment to their own advantage, Hall and Hellsten have created an unusually thought provoking and resonant piece.