Word: backlot
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...from the grain in woven baskets, donning animal costumes for a religious festival, and the ubiquitous grape-stomping. Remarkably enough, the village men and women boast wrinkles, bulges and (best of all) noses--Artifat's denizens look as though they were yanked off a Bruegel canvas, not a studio backlot. Enhanced by excellent costuming and set design, these characters present an unusually rich, as well as credible, glimpse into the past. The two leads both turn in strong, though less than stellar, performances...
...voice, spirit and chest, as Irena. There is a fake anthropological prologue in which Hollywood's tribe of all-purpose primitives is seen tethering its maidens rather uncomfortably close to a black leopard's lair, thus establishing Irena's heritage, lost in the mists of the backlot. And there is Malcolm McDowell, quite persuasively feline, as her brother. In his human form he is something of a tomcat, which, of course, means he keeps turning into a big cat, with unfortunate results for the ladies he stalks. He keeps proposing incest as the only safe and sane...