Liberté (2019) - Albert Serra

An affront to puritanical sentiments centered around sexuality and pleasure,  Albert Serra latest film, Liberte, continues the filmmakers exploration of the body, delivering a pointed provocation which rejects the diametric Freudian psychoanalysis of mind and body in which the mind must subjugate the desires of the flesh in order to reach enlightenment.  Exhibiting the polycentrics of pleasure in which perversion is detached from the pejorative, Liberte provokes and prods the audience's social constructions of acceptability as it pertains to sexuality, exhibiting how perversion itself is in a sense a fabrication, dictated by-and-large by the pressures of respectability politics and a false sense of morality.  The setting -desolate woodlands- work in unison with Serra's rich formalist designs, figuratively and literally expressing the nature of such a crude dichotomy of mind and body in which pleasure is pushed into the shadows, subjugated by the authority of the majority due to the false promises of ascetic, intellectual rigor which in turn  obfuscates the boundless nature of pleasure, liberation, and experimentation.  Taking place almost entirely over the course of one night of unadulterated indulgence, Serra's film could have easily become tedious or felt monolithic but it never does due in large part not its comedic banality which serves as a neutralizing agent for the unease most likely felt by many viewers who aren't used to such unrestrained sensuality. The denouement of Liberte is purely visual yet powerfully astute - daybreak comes, the cascading beams of sunshine bringing the forest to the foreground serves as a symbolic recognition of the performative nature of society in which our true selves are regulated to the shadows due to societal constructions rooted in the authority social acceptance.