Summary
It’s Sissy St. Claire’s big night, although things don’t go quite as planned. Amanda Kramer’s sharp dissection of the medium continues as she takes us back to an era of glitz, glamour and psychedelic existentialism.
Alongside the parallel release of Please Baby Please, a 1950s inspired musical exploration of gender, filmmaker Amanda Kramer continues to deconstruct the form in the most insane ways – and we’re here for it. In GIVE ME PITY! she turns her artistic eye to a later era and a smaller screen influence, but it is no less bizarre and wonderful.
In a pitch-perfect parody of a vintage Saturday night TV special, we are introduced to Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg), a young performer given a chance to shine in her own variety show. “I’m just dying to be known,” she declares between comparing herself to Jesus and launching into a dance number. The glitzy format is everything you’d expect: disco, songs, sketches and even a fan mail section.
What you may not expect is how strangely wrong it all goes for her. Make no mistake: this is no blooper reel. Instead, the images themselves begin to break down. Think of every one-person variety show you’ve ever seen, but with Too Many Cooks slowly invading it. Plus, who is that demonic presence lingering on the edges of the screen? The rapid decay and sense of desperation coming from Sissy St. Claire is palpable. Even the faceless TV psychic (played by Cricket Arrison) refuses to touch her: “The energy surrounding you is demonic.”
In Sissy St. Claire, Kramer and von Haselberg have created a character that emerges as a complete entity on screen. At least, complete in their realisation of her, as Sissy has some serious personal demons. Even though we only see her in a performative state, she bears her soul to the cameras. She has a monologue about a beauty ritual that is Shakespearean in scope. She sings about still being around “even though my agent tried to kill me.” Sissy hires an impressionist who sees right through her self-torture. Here is someone who would sell her soul for “the kind of making it that lasts for centuries or millennia.” The thing is, it’s possible she’s done just that. By Sissy’s own admission, her biggest enemy and competition is herself.
What sells this completely is Kramer’s ability to play it straight. Even as a guest star cancels on Sissy, forcing her to perform a two-person skit as a solo act, Kramer isn’t necessarily looking for laughs. Take on telling scene in which Sissy reads out fan mail: it starts out pleasantly before letters covered in blood and comments about her weight and appearance literally start pouring in. It’s as much a indictment of social media as it is skewering the format of the old variety shows. After all, when you piece together Sissy’s choice of sketch topics – beauty, attacks on sex workers, the power of being wanted – this is just as much an indictment of societal gender roles as Kramer’s previous work.
Ye it all makes perfect sense within its own bubble, and is best watched late at night with your mind and third eye wide open. From the monologues to the Star Spangled disco dance sequences, gloriously lensed by veteran music video photographer Patrick Meade Jones, this is Sissy St. Claire’s and Amanda Kramer’s fabulous world — and we’re just catching up with it.
2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: Amanda Kramer | WRITERS: Amanda Kramer | CAST: Sophie von Haselberg, Reshma Gajjar, Cricket Arrison, Shelley Long, M. Diesel, Tess Hewlett, Malachi Middleton | DISTRIBUTOR: Alief, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022 (NL) | RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 January – 6 February 2022 (IFFR)
