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Todd Haynes' SUPERSTAR, a Barbie-doll Biopic of Karen Carpenter, marked him out as a possible heir to Waters' mucky throne. He's proven to be a rapidly mutating animal, however, with SAFE in particular - and most likely, it seems, his upcoming Bob Dylan project - really quite different in style. His last movie, FAR FROM HEAVEN was a glorious evocation of Douglas Sirk's melodramas that touched on many of the genretypes so irreverently distorted by the unholy trinity with a kind of dignity and refusal to self-parody that further excluded him from the group. The film maker I expected Haynes would become may be blooming elsewhere, however. Anna Biller has been making films for around ten years, and I believe that they are ALL compiled on the DVD release THIS IS ANNA BILLER from Bijouflix. It's an official release, but the budgets we are dealing with here mean that it's not a mass produced DVD, but a DVD-R, copied with consumer technology. The case shows some investment however, being utterly professional and richly designed. The disc and it's packing become, together, quite representative of the work they contain. The earliest inclusion is THREE EXAMPLES OF MYSELF AS A QUEEN, a memorable fixture of some of the smallest film festivals. In a trilogy of distinct episodes, Ms. Biller casts herself in the three lead roles, supposedly extrapolated from elements of her personality. Technically this is the least of her films, and narratively it's barely developed at all but already her two greatest strengths are apparent. Anna Biller has a mean eye for set and costume design and a way with 16mm film that makes it positively blaze in colour. There are 70mm epics that look drab in comparison. Next is THE HYPNOTIST, a 26 minute riff on lusher-than-lush Hollywood melodrama that is alone on this disc for having not been dreamt up by Biller but by Jared Sanford, who acts here as well as writes. Again the images are in a super-saturated faked-up technicolour and again the sets and costumes are worthy of productions with one million times the budget. Perhaps it's due to a lack of investment in the concept, on Ms. Biller's part, but there's something missing here that confuses the otherwise deliberate emotional distance and coldly, harshly, blackly funny irony. A joke that doesn't seem to connect to any meaning, a wasted opportunity, but a no-budget technical tour de force. The last inclusion is A VISIT FROM THE INCUBUS. This is the reason you will buy this DVD. This is the reason that when VIVA, Anna Biller's first feature length film rolls out in not-quite-as-small-as-she-would-be-used-to film festivals the chattering voices will brag about knowing her earlier work. This is the reason I am writing this review. INCUBUS tells the musical tale of Lucy, a young woman of the Old West played by Anna Biller herself. She seems to be receiving nightly visits from an Incubus, who does, while she sleeps, what an Incubus does. Cast as a figure of shame, "a woman of ill repute", Lucy is driven to take a turn in burlesque at the local saloon. This is where the film indulges in it's most wonderful set pieces - and remember, everything we see was designed and choreographed by the extremely talented director. Ann Biller has made a sumptious film, visually decadent despite costing less than, I guess, YOU have spent on CDs in the last two years. It would be redundant to discuss the plotting much more, as there is little I can say without spelling the turn of events out entirely BUT there is a showdown, as befits the genre, between the fallen woman and the creature that pushed her, and it is a very satisfying one. Something reminiscent of Richard Elfman's FORBIDDEN ZONE lurks in A VISIT FROM THE INCUBUS, but Biller has nonetheless made a film that is very much her own. Impressionable sorts will quite possibly devolp crushes from seeing her explore herself and her ideas so entertainingly. Ahem. Anna Biller is mid-way thorugh the shooting of VIVA, which at 90 minutes is three times the length of INCUBUS or HYPNOTIST. She has based it on the style of advertisements or cartoon gags in 70s era Playboy, a beautiful evolution from the 50's Hollywood of this compilation. I don't know when we'll be able to see it, but the stills published so far have convinced me that it's going to be worth the wait.
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