Thoughts on Pandora's Box

Thursday, November 25, 2010 10:11 PM By Simon

-Louise Brooks gets all iconic as Lulu, an uninhibited, seductive young woman who's thoughtless nature ruin herself and those around her.

-A surprisingly subtle silent performance from Brooks, all cheeky grins and mischevious glances. Also pretty frank about sexuality, considering the day (especially of lesbianism).

-Still, you can't help but see this movie as condemning the things it so blatantly shows, preaching that sexually forward women are doomed to destroy themselves.

-And...yeah. That's about it.

2 comments:

AK said...

Simon, I've read that Louise Brook's conception of the character is that Lulu wanted to be killed by a sexual maniac from the time she was a child(bad, but even worse considering Brooks herself was molested as a child). Brooks always did a lot of self-mythologizing and at this point, having read so much about her, the real Louise and Lulu are almost the same.

November 26, 2010 at 10:20 PM
Andreas said...

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the ending... she could be destroyed by her own sexual openness, or by the systems set up by all the sexually frustrated men around her. (I.e., the ones that force her to go on the run and flee to London in the first place.)

But either way, I don't think the movie really preaches anything. It's very suggestive, and takes a very ambiguous approach to its main subject (Lulu's sexuality). If nothing else, the movie's very enamored with its protagonist.

November 28, 2010 at 12:44 PM