The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

The father of industrial music has a bosom, a row of gold teeth and high-heels. If Marie Losier had simply kept to a portrait of the transgender musician and performer Genesis O-Porridge, her splendid mix of 16-mm film, “vintage” video and HD would be on the already well-packed shelf of postmodern biopics. But the account of this mythical underground figure fades behind a love story, recorded by a camera-friend. Shot over several years, The Ballad mixes elegy, filmed performance and daily life of a whimsical couple who met in a dominatrix’s dungeon and wanted to live out their symbiotic feelings physically. “Gen” mixes the guided tour of the archives in his cellar, an Ali-Baba’s cave of New York post-punk, with the story of how he and Lady Jaye decided to change their appearances and become twins. Between a shared madness and body art, their “pandrogyny” is a socially and symbolically powerful act, which the film subtly espouses by mixing formats and epochs, images and non-sync sound. In short, by making a few holes in this double-sided locket.

Charlotte Garson