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The Criterion Channel Presents: Losing Ground (1982)

Losing Ground never saw a theatrical release in the lifetime of its director, Kathleen Collins. A shameful thing for a movie that was, in 1982, one of the first sound movies in America directed by a black woman. And it’s not like it was so obscure in production credit. True, it was an indie film with a very small budget shot largely in New York state but it featured Bill Gunn, a notable black director and actor through the 1970s, and Duane Jones -star of one of the most influential horror films of all time, Night of the Living Dead. And Collins herself was not so obscure, a New York university professor and civil rights activist -much like the central character of this movie, who is loosely based on her. But few knew it. Losing Ground played on the festival circuit before disappearing, only to be discovered decades later after Collins’s early death from breast cancer in 1988, and heralded as an important underseen work of black cinema.
Certainly there’s a link that could be drawn between Losing Ground and something like Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, which is of course itself concerned with a missing or buried black film history. And though the subjects are not the same, the manner in which they are interrogated in the two movies feel similar. Losing Ground stars Seret Scott as Sara Rogers, a philosophy professor and academic married to Gunn’s Victor, a painter, who convinces her to spend the summer at a cottage house upstate as celebration of a major sale he made, but that inconveniences the work she’s trying to do on a treatise on ecstasy -the philosophical state, not the sexual one.
The movie both intelligently discusses this idea, as far as Sara’s research goes, while subtly relating it to and commenting on the state of her and Victor’s relationship, as he finds himself drawn to a local Puerto Rican girl Celia (Martiza Rivera) as his new muse, and she shares an attraction with the mysterious and intellectual Duke (Jones), the uncle of one of her pupils, who persuades them both to be in his avant garde student film. It’s interesting to see a movie approach the artist and their inspiration from this vantage point. Where most filmmakers tend to venerate the artist and present sympathetically their drive and detached priorities, Collins comes at it as an outsider -more a teacher than an artist herself- and is thus critical of the artist, their attitude, and their processes. We’ve seen plenty of movies where Victor’s character is in focus, his relationship with Sara and indiscretions made mere character flaw that he will overcome and maybe importantly incorporate into his art. How many of the girlfriends and wives in those movies are given as much leeway or agency? It’s not just an artist thing, Collins is of course also addressing well-trodden gender disparities. Sara’s got the better job, can show more for her career -why is it Victor who must be acquiesced to?
As for Sara's romance with Duke, it doesn't ever fully materialize, but the sexual tension is strong and electric -especially given their main function in the student film is to dance together in a parking lot in what could best be described as a soul ballet. It is a captivating display, Collins proving that if she may not think of herself as an artist, she has good visual instincts in her graceful editing, attractive colour grading, and evocative dusk lighting. It is as stimulating as their talk, and for how low-key the movie is both Scott and Jones are commendable. Scott especially presents herself with a naturalistic charisma, a commanding sense of intelligence and drive that the men around her can't match. As soft-spoken as she is, she holds the authority on screen, and it may be too late by the time Victor realizes this.
In both its urban and rural environments, the movie oozes the feeling of summer; the warmth but not the heat, the life but not the monotony. The lakeside retreat may be more idyllic, but the energy of the city movie shoot is appealing as well. Age has perhaps been kind to this film, as Collins's impressions of setting and time almost divorce it from reality; it feels cast in another world, no doubt aided by the impact of Sara's research on the emotional direction of the film, culminating in a potent experience of enlightening ecstasy for Victor. It is an unusually hypnotic movie, perhaps not so far from the type of experiment Duke makes fun of his son for constructing, and yet substantially grounded and tangible. The film is called Losing Ground, and seems to refer to Sara and Victor's relationship -a far from empty romance that quickly finds itself in danger. But of course, the philosophical underpinning of that title rings true as well. An ecstatic experience is one that removes a person from themselves, allowing them to see themselves objectively. And to this, maybe the movie is more about Victor than it lets on.

Criterion Recommendation: Annette (2021)
There is still not yet a physical release of Leos Carax's beautifully insane musical Annette and I think Criterion is the best entity to correct that. A manic and boisterous satire of the fame industry written by Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks -composers of its music as well- it is the story of the romance between Adam Driver's fiercely entitled performance art comedian and Marion Cotillard's elegant opera singer, and the subsequent stardom of their daughter Annette, played by a wooden marionette. Set in an exaggerated mirror of the world of pop stardom that Carax takes ample delight in skewering, and with curious digressions into settings of dreamlike compositions and reality, it is a stark evisceration of ego and entitlement within celebrity culture -much of it aimed at Driver's character. A unique and absurd cautionary tale that yet viscerally engages with you -Annette feels as real as anyone else by the end. And of course the music is wonderfully eccentric. It is the kind of unforgettable oddball movie that Criterion does well at championing, and it would be very fun to get to see it again in high quality without having to buy an Amazon Prime subscription.

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