Drawing Restraint 9

Visual artist Matthew Barney collaborates with romantic partner and pop icon Björk on Drawing Restraint 9, a tale where west meets east and humans tranform into whales. Two westerners, Barney and Björk, arrive seperately on a whaling ship outside of Japan where they are inducted to Japanese culture through several cermonies, including a traditional wedding and a bathing session with strategically placed lemons. During a ferocius storm the film reaches its climax where legs are cut off and the western couple start their transformation into whales. Barney continues his journey into visual metaphore accompanied by Björk’s impressive score, where she experiments with harp, vocals and the ancient Japanese instrument Sho. The result is sensuous, striking and sometimes disturbing but in all aspects the equal to Barney’s previous work, The Cremaster Cycle, the five-hour magnum opus that The Stockholm International Film Festivale screened in its entirety in 2003. MATTIAS VESTIN