I Watched It So You Don't Have To: Albert Serra's Liberté

Heard about that movie at Cannes that features a solid five-minute scene of explicit ass-eating? Yeah, so did I. After reading multiple reviews that painted the 132-minute film as a nonstop “shocking” and “dangerous” sex orgy, I knew Albert Serra’s Liberté (2019) was going to be a perfect candidate for I Watched It So You Don’t Have To. I caught it at New York Film Festival and I can proudly report that no fewer than six people walked out during, with at least two audibly snoring around me. But Liberté really wasn’t the depraved movie I expected. There’s certainly a ton of equal opportunity nudity, including numerous licentious encounters, but I’ll be up front with you: your typical horror buff looking to be shocked and/or aroused will most likely be bored to tears, while your general movie-goer will be angry at the lack of plot and decidedly un-sexy sex scenes. Yet, true to the spirit of this column, and for a glacially paced sadomasochistic sex movie, I found myself pleasantly surprised at how much Liberté actually had to offer outside of mere shock value.

Taking place in the middle of a “cursed” forest in Germany in the 18th century, Liberté takes us through a night of debauchery that occurs between a dozen Libertines who are exiled from France. The moon and candle light offer the only illumination in a film that is otherwise shrouded in darkness. Shot with three cameras and exclusively in long takes, the film feels as still as a nature documentary; various men and women stand around the forest, tugging and pawing at themselves and whoever happens to cross their path. Ornate palanquins are parked between forest clearings, serving as the ideal locations to congregate and bone. The film is honestly gorgeously shot–even cloaked in shadow, every scene looks like an X-rated Baroque oil painting.

Though the film starts at sundown and end with dawn, it feels like it’s shot in real time. Each scene begins and ends with echos of the previous, whether it’s heard in moans or seen in the distance. We witness several encounters: a naked woman hogtied to a tree as a man pours buckets of milk over her in front of other men. Men and women subjecting their bare behinds to whipping and flogging, leaving them bloody and crying out for more. Aforementioned ass-eating, with a camera that really gets you right in the middle of the action (“Open the gates of hell!” Duc du Tesis yells before chowing down). Men and women wallowing and fornicating in piles of animal shit. A disfigured man receiving golden showers in a bathtub, while somebody jabs sharp objects into his amputated stump. A woman somehow masturbating with the sharp end of a tree stump. And a whole lot of fondling, masturbating, fluid-swapping, and observing.

The dialogue is sparse, and the languages spoken drift fluidly from French to German to Italian–serving to broaden the conversation from its specific setting. Some of the most graphic imagery comes from the imagination of Duc de Wand (Baptiste Pinteaux), who waxes poetically about his peculiar sexual fantasies; including such lascivious activities as sticking his dick in a horse’s nose, shoving shit and piss inside of a vagina or snapping a woman’s neck during climax. Duc de Walchen (Helmut Berger) is brought in by these Libertines in hopes that he will accept and disseminate their way of life to the masses, but he ends up shivved in the back and left for dead for his troubles. We also meet various madames and mademoiselles who antagonize, belittle and use these older men for their own sexual gratification. Unfortunately they’re all rather interchangeable, all much younger and more attractive than the men in the film (which is probably the movie’s biggest failing).

If the plot of Liberté sounds kind of vague, that’s because it is. Albert Serra had already released various versions of Liberté in multiple mediums in the past couple years; first as a video art installation, then as a stage play, and now as a feature-length film. The art installation and the movie are reportedly cut from the same footage, with Serra claiming he found the structure of the film while editing. It’s fairly obvious too, from its meandering pace–around the hour and a half mark you start to feel antsy and bored. That said, I’d argue the brilliance of Liberté lies in those ho-hum moments that come just as the sexual acts start to ramp up their explicitness. The movie casts its audience in the role of the vouyer, using the act of observation as a meta commentary on nature, pleasure and freedom.

Liberté is as much about nature versus man as it is about tongue versus butt. By setting the film in the middle of the woods, Serra reframes the sexual desires of these Libertines as the id to society’s superego. Every scene and fantasy in Liberté relates back to the natural world, showcasing the co-mingling of flesh in dirt without judgment. Sexuality is shown to be an inherent part of nature, it’s our inhibitions that are unnatural. In fact, their illicit sexual proclivities are almost too natural and honest; it’s uncomfortable to see grown adults be so plainly libidinous. Watching these men standing around rubbing themselves in between trees is about as blunt and off-putting as catching sight of an over-excited dog’s member. The lingering shots of trees, the moon peering through the canopy, the rustling of wind, and the drama of daybreak is all strangely more exciting and astounding than watching a bunch old white people doin’ it in the “wrong” holes.

Which brings us to pleasure and how tedious it is. Indulgence can bring its own sort of terror: the normalization of excess. Unlike the vast majority of France during the 1700s, every character in this film comes from privilege. They have the ability to do whatever they want, therefore they are driven towards breaking taboos as the last frontier of extravagance. This quickly slides towards sadomasochism because pleasure is deemed too easy to achieve. Duc de Wand says as much when he proclaims that pain is realer than pleasure, arguing that women can too easily fake expressions of enjoyment. But the thrill of pain dissipates when everybody is an equally hardened and consenting adult. Nobody is shown to be truly satisfied, instead they’re mostly left bleeding on the ground and demanding their partner to go even farther. Towards the end of the night one of our Ducs can’t even get it up anymore to his and his partner’s dismay. This coldness of excess is similar to the coldness in abundant pornography. The downside to pure freedom is that without any sort of limitations, the thrill no longer exists. Living truly, wildly free inevitably ends in a lack of satisfaction because there’s no bar for achievement.

So what is freedom really if a 24/7 fuck-fest in the woods is not enough? Taken at its broadest, Liberté explores the boundaries of freedom like a matryoshka doll. We have these characters, confined to cramped palanquins and working out their sexual energy, being watched through glass windows by other characters–all of whom are stuck within the boundaries of the forest and exiled from society. Then you, the viewer, have been cast in a position of the peeping tom vouyer–gazing behind the fourth wall at those who peer through trees to peer through glass to peer through orifices. Nobody in this scenario is living out their dreams to the fullest because, at the end of the day, to dream is inherently more satisfying than reality. Duc De Wand is the only character who achieves this moment of highest pleasure after a fellow Duc sits down to fantasize the perfect sexual scenario with him. (Which I’ll be honest I’ve since forgotten or perhaps blocked out of my mind, but it included the idea of a woman eating a mixture of feces and vomit that she got out of a man’s colon or something. You know the one.)

Liberté is certainly not looking to moralize but it’s also not exactly a wholehearted endorsement of the Libertine lifestyle either. There’s a strong current of cynicism that runs throughout, which perhaps is more of a c’est la vie reflection than it is Albert Serra’s damnation of Libertine practices or his personal desire to leave society. One leaves Liberté thinking about how natural it is to desire, to want and to take. But it is up to us to draw the line on when and what is enough, as true happiness lives in the space between achievement and desire. The crack, the crevasse, as it were, between two halves of—okay I’ll stop while I’m ahead.