SXSW Film Review: Excess Flesh

Filmmaker and multidisciplinary provocateur Patrick Kennelly aims his righteously surreal ire at a thoroughly broken social system that elevates a borderline cadaverous feminine form above the more curvy and natural norm.

”I hope you already ate,” said Kennelly during the film’s Alamo Ritz intro at its Friday night world premiere, hastily noting that his film’s theme of collective culturecide via overconsumption – of food, sex, and all else –  might put some of the audience off their usual Alamo Drafthouse fare. No ballyhoo, that: Excess Flesh is nauseating, perceptive, and an altogether damning indictment of a hyper-consumerist society run amuck. It’s a wildly imaginative cultural critique that recalls mid-eighties NYC filmmaker Nick Zedd’s infamous Cinema of Transgression and its accompanying manifesto.

Bethany Orr gives an utterly fearless performance as Jill, a young Los Angelean perceived, both by others and herself, as being overweight. She’s not, but her kitten-with-a-whip roommate Jennifer (an equally disturbing, and great, turn by Mary Loveless) seems to be constantly shoveling Repo Man-esque generic snackables into her face without gaining an ounce. It doesn’t help matters that both women’s insatiable appetites are, no pun intended, madly, manically feeding off of each other. Comparisons to Polanski’s more paranoid moments (Repulsion) are not unwarranted, and the whole hallucinogenic affair vibes like a Richard Kern shoot gone terribly wrong.

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Excess Flesh

Midnighters, World Premiere
Saturday, March 14, 11:59pm, Alamo Lamar C
Friday, March 20, 4:45pm, Alamo Lamar C

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