Caniba

This is composed mostly of handheld, deliberately out-of-focus, extreme close-ups, with intermittent dialogue between two non-communicative brothers, interspersed with the texts, images, films and artefacts that form the fabric of their past lives. This abstraction seems like an attempt to suspend the "natural attitude" towards cinematic perception, to open up a phenomenology, not of visual experience, but of the strangeness of desire, centred on the difficulty of finding its locus. Interesting.

Probably the out-of-focus scenes and close-ups that fill the whole films are a bit too tiring for me (especially because Issei Sagawa barely has expressions on his face), but still some interesting exposure and thinking from the brothers about their own desire and its connection to their history. This, together with religious quotes, tales and the unique style of shooting, gives a feeling about the realm of human desire that is much more complex than cliché and sanity/insanity opposition.

About one of the most upsetting films I've ever seen.

Unsettling movie watching experience from many point of views. Mostly composed of close-ups -- sometimes all we see is a blur --, this documentary seems abstract, but it's actually rather informative about this man's hideous desires and his brother's horrid compulsion of hurting himself in his arm -- he call it his penis. He even made a graphic novel about the Belgian woman he killed and ate back in he 1980s. Images of their childhood provide some past. But all we get is flesh.