The Pirate

Damn, I wish The Pirate was a literal title. There are no pirates in this movie. Instead, it’s a semi-experiemental melodrama with big ideas and a focus on vibes. Sadly, The Pirate lacked a structure that allowed me as a viewer to pick up what it was putting down.

There are five main characters in The Pirate. The leads are Alma and Carole, a pair of ex-lovers. After reuniting one night, Carole semi-kidnaps Alma away to a hotel. Here, she tries to convince Alma to rekindle their relationship. Also present at the hotel is a young unnamed girl who’s a friend of Carol’s. Said girl acts more or less like Carole’s assistant. Alma’s husband also plays a major role. He shows up to inject additional melodrama into Alma and Carole’s already melodramatic scenes. The final character is an unnamed man who is posing as a private detective and follows the other characters around. The young girl dubs him as Number Five.

The Pirate has a lot of good moments, ideas and tone. But it lacks the structure to support it. Things just sort of happen in The Pirate for the sake of “cinema.” Additionally, it feels as if the characters have some sort of genre awareness. There’s often not rhyme or reason to their actions beyond the fact that they’re in this sort of pretentious, weird melodrama and are playing along with this tone. Overall, the movie feels disjointed. There are good individual scenes and ideas but a lack of internal logic. Things just sort of happen in this film in a way that stopped me from fully enjoying it.

The film is also very much weird for the sake of being weird. But it’s not really that weird. I’ve definitely seen weirder WLW movies. The film wants to be challenging but I don’t know what I’m being challenged on. All that’s a challenge for me is caring about these characters. As much as they’re often at an emotional 10/10, I don’t care about the why.

The main example of this film being challenging without any reason is the casting of Alma’s husband. Alma’s husband is played by actress Jane Birkin’s real life brother. Why? What did it add to this viewing experience that people playing a married couple are siblings in reality? It’s certainly a weird decision but not in any way I champion.

The focus on a lesbian relationship is part of The Pirate’s obsession with making “weird” choices. This is not a case of matter of fact lesbian portrayals. While the film does allow a level of depth and focus to its lesbian characters, it very much feels like the audience is supposed be be intrigued and shocked by seeing two women as lovers. I’m not and I don’t like seeing my sexuality exoticised and used as part of a plea to be “challenging” cinema. Like everything else in the movie, the lesbian relationship lacks a layer of depth. It’s there because a lesbian relationship is unusual in films and this film is obsessed with being unusual more than being good or emotionally honest.

The Pirate is just disappointing. It’s weird but not weird enough. There’s a level of artificiality to the film which could be neat if it pushed it further into some sort of ironic commentary on the medium of cinema. Instead, The Pirate languishes in being halfway between a standard melodrama and truly experimental film. The film would’ve been better if it was a straight-up melodrama. There are some good ideas and good performances here. But as experimental cinema, the film’s idea of weird is far too tame.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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