Twisted Eyes (Verdrehte Augen), Second Version2002

A drama of gazes in which a woman's turned-up eyes express both her sexual superiority and her submission: She shows the contempt she feels for her impotent husband, who is unable to start the car, by twisting her eyes from the passenger seat. And with regard to their pursuers, who later attempt to force their way through both doors of the car where the couple has found refuge, keeping them in view by twisting her eyes is not possible at the moment she looks, the victor gains entry to the vehicle, which he had been confident of from the film's very beginning. His composed expression, full of both speculation and disdain as he languidly chews on a toothpick (which justifies the ironic tone of the subplot dealing with the preparation of meat), meets the woman's cool, passive gaze thanks to the indirectness of the cut alone. At the beginning of the film the woman sits in a rattan chair, the furniture of sexual liberation since Emmanuelle. The two men sit outside, attempting to penetrate the rooms occupied by the woman. Although Twisted Eyes has more of a narrative character than many other films by Dietmar Brehm, it is primarily structural. The close-up of the victorious man (the patient hunter) functions as a leitmotif which comments on a primitive type of sexual politics canonized in pornographic films: Women are at the mercy of two types of desire one powerless and the other overpowering. Brehm ends his film with an image taken from nature, similarly to its beginning with one from the food chain. (Bert Rebhandl)
Translation: Steve Wilder