Borowczyk really defied what could pass on cinema and what couldn't. If someone today even heard of the possibility of attempting to do this short, they would try to shoot the director and guarantee something like this never saw the light of day.
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
An atmospheric comedy.
Two bored dwarves fight over a cushion.
Gavotte is showing in 1 cinema in Los Angeles - next screening Thursday 12 November at 22:00 at Los Feliz 3 Theatre.
Next screenings: Thursday 12 November.
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Borowczyk really defied what could pass on cinema and what couldn't. If someone today even heard of the possibility of attempting to do this short, they would try to shoot the director and guarantee something like this never saw the light of day.
A dwarf is loitering on the fringes of a stately ballroom while someone off screen plays Rameau on the harpsichord. He’s bored af and passes the time by absentmindedly playing with a fine lady’s fan or trying to catch a fly in a box, while determinedly securing himself a comfortable perch. But soon another dwarf enters the frame and fights him for his cushion. It’s a gleefully inappropriate short film that relishes its incongruities. Walerian Borowczyk Ranked
After the devastating impact of Rosalie I wanted something to ease me into a happier state before I went to sleep, and this short - the last Borowczyk made before his feature debut, The Theatre of Mr. and Mrs. Kabal - was the perfect palette cleanser. A tale of rivalry between two dwarves in the eighteenth century set to an inappropriately stately harpsichord recital, Gavotte shows Borowczyk attempting to match with live action the precision he showed with animated comic timing. The dwarves, I think, are dwarves for the same reason that Herzog's Even Dwarves Started Small has an all-dwarf cast; to allegorise the times when we all feel about three feet tall. Unlike Herzog, Borowczyk's film is so stylised that I occasionally forgot these actors were dwarves at all. It goes on a bit in its earlier act, but the slapstick fight at the end is worth the wait.
It follows two bored eighteenth-century dwarves who engage in a petty, silent struggle over a comfortable cushion and seating arrangement to baroque harpsichord music.
It was directed by Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk in 1968.
The short film has a runtime of 11 minutes.
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