Fetish, Fear, & Folly! – all with an undercurrent of unsettled neurosis. These are the themes of the six-vignette feature “Neurotique”. This is New Silent Film at its most dubious.” [Official Synopsis]

Director Nara Denning’s daring six-vignette production, “Neurotique” is fittingly, an expressionistic exercise in erotic neurosis.  It’s German Expressionism roots, devious brand of eccentric-yet-relevant humor, and subversively surreal imagery combine to render this Neo-silent narrative compendium a wholly unique and stirringly imaginative artistic offering.

William Buck plays the central figure in each of the six shorts that comprise “Neurotique.”  His sexually repressed, tepid but reactionary characterization drive the episodes with a peculiar likability veiled in an oddly familiar air of mystery.  Whether a caricatured drunkard who petitions a back-alley genie for whiskey and a trio of dancing concubines, sexual prey as an unwilling sanatorium resident, the Frankenstein/Weird Science god of a mechanical sexpot robot, or a lurking safari photographer who encounters a giant jungle-goddess communing with her waterfall lover, Buck remains a charming performer capable of infusing his character(s) with depth and nuance that serves to enrich his adventures, considering even the likely interpretation that his character is intended to represent an archetype rather than a singular individual.

Denning’s measured direction, which aims to paint each frame as a freestanding work of art, combined with the wildly creative set design, classic minimalist effects, and a brilliant original score by Kevin Harp, Stoo Odom, Willy the Mailman, Marco Villalobos, and Seth Augustus recalls the innovative, unbridled imagination of silent-era French auteur, Georges Méliès, and the cryptic inevitability of David Lynch’s 1977 landmark, “Eraserhead.”

With “Neurotique” Denning artfully protests the prevailing attitudes of the tech-driven, meretriciousness of modern commercial filmmaking, and demonstrates, like Martin Scorsese’s 1980 masterpiece, “Raging Bull,” that the entirety of a film’s mise-en-scène, regardless of existing technologies or techniques, should be determined largely as an element of artistic discretion.

Denning wields that discretion confidently and comes away with a titillating and uncompromised exploration of the expansive and mysterious lacuna of sexual desire and the elusive nature of identity.

Visit the official Neurotique website