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| Jey Crisfar in Otto; or, Up With Dead People |
Cast: Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Christophe Chemin, Guido Sommer, Gio Black Peter, Susanne Sachße, Stefan Kuschner. Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce. Cinematography: James Carman. Production design: Stefan Dickfeld. Film editing: Jörn Hartmann, Bruce LaBruce. Music: Mikael Karlsson.
Otto (Jey Crisfar) may be a zombie. Or, depending on which side of the bifurcated title of Otto; or, Up With Dead People you fall, he may be a schizophrenic young man who gets lured into making a movie about zombies by a pretentious director called Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus). We first see Otto clawing his way out of his grave, but later we see the same scene under Medea's direction. Bruce LaBruce's movie is a scattershot satire, never salacious enough to be labeled porn, never coherent enough to be taken seriously as a commentary on capitalism, the environment, homophobia, AIDS, commercialism, or any of the other topics it glances at. Sometimes gross, sometimes sexy, sometimes sad, and never one thing long enough for the viewer to make up their mind about, as a collection of remarkable and sometimes disturbing moments it works often enough to credit LaBruce with fertile imagination, undisciplined as it may be.
