Madame Bovary's Revenge (1995)

• 70%
• 1995
• Ellen Cantor

"In her very first moving image work, Cantor already displays the masterly use of appropriated footage for which she would become known, inserting explicit scenes from the classic porn film Behind the Green Door (1972) into key scenes of lovemaking from Louis Malle's 1959 succès de scandale The Lovers. Taking as its inspiration the (most likely apocryphal) story that actress Jeanne Moreau and her costar were "really making love" on the set of The Lovers, Cantor shows us what director Malle could not, through the addition of hardcore footage from the iconic Marilyn Chambers porn film. At times the edits between one film and the next are remarkably seamless, creating an ingenious illusion, at others Cantor self-consciously foregrounds her redubbing and re-editing of her VHS source material.