Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Amanda Kramer
Starring: Sophie von Haselberg, Shelley Long, Cricket Arrison, M. Diesel
Is the variety show still a thing? A mainstay of pre-21st Century British
and American TV, the variety show was built around a celebrity singing and
skitting in front of a live audience: networks trading on big names,
building an hour or so around marquee personae in the service of light
entertainment. Quick research reveals that during the '70s and '80s anyone
who was anyone – from the Bradys to The Osmonds - had at least one season
of such a vehicle, but, perhaps due to the more cynical awareness of
modern viewers, today the variety show is the province of Krusty the Clown
punchlines on The Simpsons (a joke which was dated even in
the heyday '90s and subsequently left alone in the recent seasons), or the
stuff of kitschy, knowing content such as that Christmas special Gaga did
a few years back or that so-very-arch Bill Murray one.
It's hard not to imagine that even at the time there wasn't something
profoundly hauntological about these shows, a perception perhaps
facilitated by me having the Jacksons and Carpenters specials on in the
background this morning as I write. The Carpenters one I knocked on is the
infamous Space Encounters broadcast, a cheap but not quite cheerful
Star Wars cash in where Richard and Karen are visited by
aliens who require the MOR siblings to teach their planet how to sing.
Gorgeous gleaming sets straight from Planet of the Vampires, underwritten sketches and unhinged canned laughter provide the
narrative excuse for the duo's pristine easy listening pop (it's always
interesting hearing their covers - like a straightlaced, hand clapping
'Dancing in the Street' here); all sponsored by Herbal Essences, "you’ll
swear you have more hair." It's better than the Star Wars Holiday Special,
but you get the impression that these shows were never destined for
posterity, and the vaudeville delivery braced by the hyperbolic audience
reaction give the rediscovered broadcast a weird, uncanny mien when
divorced from context.
It's unnerving enough as it was, and so enter Give Me Pity!, Amanda Kramer's stark horror take on the concept of variety. The
film/show is built around Sissy St. Claire's "First television special,"
which she has dreamed of accomplishing since she was "a girl" (this modern
notion that fame is deserved just because you "want it" is upfront in
Give Me Pity!, as is the insidious ploy of distress as authentic entertainment: "I can
make myself cry, even that I am willing to share with you tonight," Sissy
promises). In a stroke of ingenious, serendipitous casting, Sissy is
played by Sophie von Haselberg, who literally could not be more
Bette Midler's daughter: Bette redux, encompassing the great woman's
shining charisma, talent and true-star ability to seem at once relatable
while intensely magnetic; the Divine Ms. M repeated in her daughter
doppelganger. Von Haselberg is a powerful presence in her own right, but
the resemblance, along with the opening scenes red perm which deliberately
recalls Midler in her 1988 Beaches pomp, adds to the
pervading strangeness of Give Me Pity!.
The mise-en-scene of variety - false stages emptily over-illuminated by
unforgiving key lights - are eerily recreated, with canned applause and
laughter increasingly mocking as the show revolves through staples such as
an audience Q&A (via a stuffed prop mail bag), confessional sketches
and musical numbers ('You're a Grand Old Flag': camp banger). These
sequences duly become more unhinged as horror infects the show; initially
espied as a dark figure nearly out of shot, and then manifesting in
technical issues and fractured editing which connote psychedelic break
down. An early tarot reading (where the set disco ball is descended as a
crystal ball - ha!) intones that Sissy has a "demonic energy," and this
from a medium with no face: the imagery, from the retro-cringe to the more
abject, is deliciously creepy. Presented in an academy ratio, with von
Haselberg projecting in every frame, the effect is intensely
claustrophobic. Sissy confesses that she's "always wanted to be haunted":
be careful what you wish for, etc.
Yes, the targets Give Me Pity! inculcates are obvious:
hollow fame, the empty need for validation, the quest for actualisation;
all conferred within a television stage set which seems like the loneliest
place on earth. Screened in airless 4:3, it does ultimately become a bit
too much to endure. That said, the film is charged by the contradictory
energy of not wanting to see a woman suffering a prolonged televised
disintegration and that woman being played by Sophie von Haselberg,
someone who I think it is impossible to tire of watching. Strikingly
original and singular, its themes are so pointed and presentation so
visually direct that Give Me Pity! is perhaps more art
installation than movie, but never anything less than urgently convincing
(I was thinking that it would work well fan-refitted as a framing device
with horror shorts and movies interspersed within...). Early on, Sissy
references television's golden age as a critical reminder of the sort of
schtick that Give Me Pity! is taking off. And, ok, the
variety show isn't a thing anymore, which does rob the film of a
contemporary immediacy, but what other model is Kramer to satirise via a
Faustian pact dynamic? Influencer culturezzzz? The once remove of Kramer's
film is an uneasy joy, and the most fitting, and poignantly telling,
tribute to variety the painstaking Give Me Pity! engenders
is its acknowledged reliance on the star power at the centre of the genre
and this film: "straight to your heart on demand, wooh!"
Give Me Pity! is in UK cinemas and
on VOD from November 10th.
