Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Shannon Weiss Jan Svankmajer's Conspirators of Pleasure is a film that speaks to an individualistic demographic to say the least. The film utilizes a combination of live action footage and stop action animation techniques to portray the lives of six people whose lives are dictated by their disturbing sexual fetishes. While some find the interconnected narratives humorous and others appear to relate to the story, this writer for one found nothing about the film witty or meaningful. In terms of thematic relevance the film does illustrate one reoccurring motif that the writer took note of: prior to executed their elaborate sexual desires, be it through torture, role play or a variety of more bizarre activities, the characters isolated themselves often through the use of a symbolic wardrobe door. Seemingly out of shame due to the oppressive nature of society in the given country each of the characters attempts to remain 'in the closet' so to speak, about their deviant personal lives. The film posits no conclusive ending and allows each character to remain more or less unchanged; the film therefore is little more than an unnecessary display of unusual behavior and this writer would have preferred it if the closet door had remained closed.

NateManD Czech surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer is known for his bizarre stop motion films. In his full length films like "Alice" and "Faust", he takes his viewers to a subconscious world with real actors and stop motion creatures. "Conspirators of Pleasure" deals with the fantasies and fetishes of various everyday people. Each person at first seeming normal, spends almost the whole film trying to invent methods of fulfilling their bizarre fantasies. There is even some moments when characters become puppets. One man designs a head of a chicken suit and fantasizes about dropping a rock on his neighbor's head. The neighbor lady fantasizes about dominating her neighbor, turning him into a puppet and whipping him. Another example is a woman's fetish for bread. She rolls up balls of bread and sucks them up her nose through a straw. Of course there's a whole assortment of other depraved people with strange fantasies. Although the film is extremely bizarre, it is also very funny. Jan Svankmajer has created an intense atmosphere of strange desire, that may not be far from how some everyday people function. It's a funny film that explores the strange world of hidden fetishes.

ionford 8/10This is my favorite full-length Svankmajer film, and not just because the lack of dialogue leaves no room for poor casting decisions in the dub for the American release (see Alice).Besides the fact that fetish films are better or worse depending on the level of weirdness in the fetishes portrayed, this subject compliments Svankmajer's style perfectly.The Kino DVD release comes with a bonus short film, Food, which illustrates what I'm talking about perfectly. Food is typical Svankmajer in how meticulously the temporal details are. If we see one man eating a full breakfast out of another man's vending-organs, the next man in line's breakfast has to be given the same time and detailed effort in portraying.Likewise, Conspirators of Pleasure leaves nothing to the imagination but the story. But that's what fetishes are all about. Perverse in their contortion of sexual mores but perverse also in their slavery to the mundane details and meticulous planning.This is a very worthwhile study in perversity that doubles as pretty straightforward and blunt surrealism.

ThurstonHunger I very much enjoyed Svankmajer's "Faust" so I was happy (and not ashamed) to pick this up from the same spot (hooray for libraries!). It could be that Svankmajer is trying to isolate fetishism from an explicit sexual nature...the film quickly moves beyond the porn shop purchase to more vivid and involved flights of fantasy. The stop-frame animation itself lends a frenetic feeling, and the story does jump between several substories loosely united by interactions. Despite those facets, it seemed to move slowly, circling around some of the same images like a crazed chicken, or a fish in a tiny tub.Perhaps the message is that everyone has their itch to scratch...but the nails never really did dig in for me. And if everyone is odd, then nothing is odd. This film sort of had that effect on me. A mildly profound statement, but ultimately, I suspect, an untrue one.Not that there's anything wrong with you...nor me and my obsessive film reviewing...Without saying too much about the actual "action", there is also a potential conclusion drawn from the film's flimsy plot that the boundary between imagination and reality might be more permeable than we suspect. That gave a little injection.For those who find humor in this, I didn't. The closets? Yawn... Well maybe the recurring musical themes, especially the operatic baritone blast. The stories intermingle without ever interlocking. A more studied viewing may help more, it would not surprise me if there were some sort of secret decoder to the blood, bread, fish and further fetishes on display... But for me it just wound up as a sort of a coq-up.Though a visually memorable one. Snorting the little crumb balls will remain with me. I actually preferred the shorter entrees from the "Food" chain of films served with this DVD. More focused and smaller in scope and time, but plenty of fantastic creativity with clay and otherwise. Especially the infinite breakfast club.