Marc Ferrer and Laura Ruiz Penacho | ¡Corten! (Cut!) / 2021

the talentless filmmaker

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marc Ferrer and Laura Ruiz Penacho (screenwriters and directors) ¡Corten! (Cut!) / 2021

 

No screenwriters are listed for Spanish directors Marc Ferrer’s and Laura Ruiz Penacho’s giallo-inspired film Cut! Which might hint to some detractors just how amateurishly patched together this work is. Many commentators have equally attacked its “bad” acting.

 

    In fact, this film, a truly campy tract, purposely uses the seemingly weak acting of its characters to help make its point. The amateur filmmaker of the work, Marcos (Marc Ferrer), whose films hardly anyone likes or even can endure, himself comments: “When a film contains a bit of bad acting, it’s an imperfect film, but when it contains a lot of bad acting, it’s a question of style.” As Eye for Film critic Jennie Kermode observes “One could never accuse Cut! Of lack style.”

     Filmed in the bright colors we often associate with Giallo films (although as Kermode points out, these are closer to the colors of films by Almodóvar or Ozon rather than the richer hues of Dario Argento or Jean Rollin), Ferrers and Ruiz Penacho’s work is a queer camp version of the giallo genre, with plenty of satire, including the stock scenes and bad acting of those works, up its sleeve.

     The central character, filmmaker Marcos’ singular goal is to make more films. He hardly cares about the films he’s currently shooting as he begins to imagine the next, just has he hardly cares for his staff, his actors, or his sexual partners once he has gotten want he wants out of them. You can well understand, accordingly, why someone might be out to get him. His reaction to the first of several murders of those working on his newest film, a transsexual bartender he has just asked to join the cast, results in hardly a raised eyebrow.

     When the police, the head detective (Silvia Alcaraz) and his bull dyke assistant (Cristina López Morcuende) who spends much of her time in bed with many of the cutest of transvestite performers from the nearby club) accuse him of possibly being the killer, his only response is “Do I look like a killer?” And even when one of his favorite actresses Amapola is slashed to death, Marcos’ only response is “Really?”

      His dedicated staff, working mostly for free, almost all realize how terrible the films they are making are, and, as Kermode notes, are “well aware that he doesn’t really deserve them.” When the shooting budget cannot even include food, an intern offers to cater the next shoot. A couple of individuals have gone out of their way to try to be in his films, one woman who insists he had promised her and another young man Alejandro who’s traveled from Madrid to Barcelona and even learned Catalan to be in the film are dismissed at the door by Marcos’ assistant. When they finally get Amapola’s scene on film, Marcos edits the entire work in two days.

     Even the head detective’s wife, who loves giallo works, hates the films by Marcos and tells her husband so in no uncertain terms, while forcing him to watch, yet again, another Argento movie.

      On the evening of his new movie’s premiere, the woman wanting to be in his film arranges for several brutes to beat Marcos up, sending him to the hospital. The audiences all hate the film, and the reviewers unanimously pan it. But almost immediately, with no funding and despite the obvious dangers with a stock giallo-like killer on the loose, Marcos begins planning his next film, picking up Sergio for sex with the intention featuring him in the next movie.

      Meanwhile, the police find the blood-splashed body of Marcos’ assistant dead in his own bed. His last sexual encounter was with Alejandro, who steals his phone in order to get in touch with Marcos, accidentally leaving his billfold behind.

       Rushing to Marcos flat, the Detective’s lesbian assistant shoots Alejandro dead the moment he is about to kiss Marcos, justifying the act as saving Marcos’ life.

       But the lingering realization that they had absolutely no concrete proof that Alejandro was, in fact, the real murder makes the dyke assistant resign—with more time now to play in bed with her transsexual beauties.

       Nonetheless, the murders have appeared to come to an end. That is, until the detective, out walking with his wife, again encounters Marcos in the park. Barcelona is, after all, as Marcos suggests, a place where you run into the people you know again and again. The head detective introduces the filmmaker to his wife, again suggesting since she loves giallo films she might be interested in him. But she rudely agrees only that she likes Argento.

        As soon as Marcos leaves, she begs a moment away from her husband as she goes on to stalk Marcos, the viewer quickly perceiving that it was she all along who was killing off Marcos’ actors and friends, which goes to show you that if enough people hate your art, even writers and filmmakers are in jeopardy

     Just as the slasher nears her prey, two policewomen observe what is happening and go the chase, as the Police Detective’s wife turns to run. A woman, holding open a LGBTQ+ rainbow umbrella, realizes that it’s no longer raining, and folds up the umbrella, the tip pointing for a few moments into space. At that very instant the murderer runs into it, impaling herself on its sharp metal tip. The end.

       Well, not really. There’s always the next film. Frankly, I can’t wait. As Kermode nicely summarizes this film:

     

“As Marco insists that films have to be made, regardless of the consequences, Cut! evinces a joie-de-vivre that is at once infectious and, in the context of serial killings, seriously unhinged. Behind this lurks an awareness, however, of what camp humour is for; an understanding that this is a tradition which has evolved in order to reclaim joy despite existing in close proximity to violence.”

 

Los Angeles, March 22, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).