The Man Who Envied Women wryly chronicles the aftermath of a breakup between a philandering professor, played by two different actors, and his artist wife, voiced by choreographer Trisha Brown, who serves as the largely unseen narrator. Yet the work’s concerns radiate far beyond the couple, expanding to include film history and on-the-ground politics alike—punctuating the piece are a variety of cinematic quotations, from Hollis Frampton to Barbara Stanwyck, as well as documentary footage of spirited exchanges about American imperialism in Latin America and the housing crisis in New York.
Category: Experimental
Yvonne Rainer’s landmark film is a meditation on ambivalence that plays with cliché and the conventions of soap opera while telling the story of a woman whose sexual dissatisfaction masks an enormous anger.
When a scientist finds a cocoon a woman emerges from it. She is being chased by two faceless monsters who are collecting specimens for a museum.
Vince arranges to meet Chi Chi, who he is having an illicit affair with. But she is killed in an accident. Vince’s sister fails in a suicide attempt but dies by electrocution as fog descends on the town, after a storm in which Vince is killed.
Julius Orlovsky, after spending years in a New York mental hospital, emerges catatonic and must rely on his brother Peter, who lives with poet Allen Ginsberg. When Julius wanders off in the middle of filming, Frank hires and actor to play the character and begins a fictional version of his psychological portrait. Then, as suddenly as he vanished, Julius turns up in an institution where he and Peter must face their relationship.