Office Killer
Photographer Cindy Sherman gained
world fame with her black and white photos, called ‘film stills’, in which she
portrayed herself in the roles of fictional B movie heroines from imaginary
films. In the eighties and nineties her work became darker and sinister. In her
‘horror’ and ‘disgust’ pictures she stages morbid atmospheres. With elements
such as model-doll limbs ripped apart, and vomit and other bodily fluids, she
suggests an agonising microcosm of death and decay. Sherman plays with multiple
identities. Each time, she succeeds in upsetting our expectations. Her debut,
Office Killer, is no exception.
Dorine, shy, always keeping her
head down, is a diligent copy editor on ‘Constant Consumer Magazine’. She is
the kind of woman everyone in the office relies on, but nobody wants to know.
Dorine lives alone with her handicapped mother. Her daily routine is broken
when the company reorganises and is forced to do most of her work online, from
her computer at home. One night she has to do some overtime, and accidentally
electrocutes one of her bossy colleagues. In a split second her fear switches
into power. Where we are used to seeing on-screen murderers who try to conceal
their acts, and make them look like accidents, Sherman invert raditional story
patterns. For Dorine it is a much better idea to approach this accidental death
as murder. She takes the corpse to her cellar at home, and treats him like a
more patient colleague who never nags or complains. Now that she has a taste
for blood and revenge, she becomes a serial killer, ‘inviting’ all her
colleagues to her home office. By the end of the movie, Dorine’s cellar looks
like a ‘live version’ of Sherman’s recent photographs: compositions of decay
and rotting bodies. But where the tone of the photos is deadly serious, here it
is a brilliant parody of the horror genre. The open ending leaves no doubt
about that: since there are no more staff to work for, Dorine heads for a new job
as office manager…As in her photographs, Cindy Sherman creates a whole new
world, which slightly resembles the one we know, but which operates on its own,
bizarre terms. Office Killer is a highly creative work that defies easy
definition: it is art and it is camp, it is both within the genre and a
self-conscious comment on it, it is horrifying and it is funny. But like every
Cindy Sherman creation, it is like nothing any of us has seen before.
Directed by: Cindy Sherman; cast: Carol
Kane, Molly Ringwald, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Barbara Sukowa, Michael
Imperioli; produced by Christine Vachon & Pamela Koffler; Artfear
Productions.
In collaboration with Slovenska
kinoteka
