Madame X: An Absolute Ruler
LGBTQ+ Voices
•
2h 16m
Directed by Ulrike Ottinger | 131 mins | 1977
The hard, merciless pirate ruler of the China Sea, Madame X sends out a missive to women, inviting them to leave domestic security behind for a life of dangerous adventure, but when a panoply of different women—including Yvonne Rainer on rollerskates—arrive to serve as her shipmates, they find themselves slaves to a new tyrannical power. In her first feature, Ottinger is already inimitable, making use of extravagant costumes courtesy Tabea Blumenschein and a languid style that’s all her own.
Up Next in LGBTQ+ Voices
-
Ticket of No Return
Directed by Ulrike Ottiger | 108 mins | 1979
Ottinger’s collision of Hollywood flamboyancy and a particularly dour documentary aesthetic suits this Janus-faced tale of two female lushes from two very different walks of life, alike in many ways, but incapable of recognizing their bond. One is a kn... -
Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yell...
Directed by Ulrike Ottinger | 150 mins | 1984
In Ottinger’s contemporary reinvention of the famous morality tale, fin-de-siècle dandy Dorian Gray is reimagined as a drag role, played without comment on the switch by Veruschka von Lehndorff in the male lead. Ottinger collides Oscar Wilde with Frit... -
Freak Orlando
Directed by Ulrike Ottinger | 127 mins | 1981
An outrageous, carnivalesque camp reading of Virginia Woolf’s "Orlando", Ottinger’s crazed comedy follows its gender nonconforming hero/heroine through five wide-ranging adventures that span the history of the world: the Freak City department store, m...
