LOST IN NEW YORK

(a.k.a. PERDUES DANS NEW YORK)

Huddled in a black shroud in the middle of deserted street surrounded by decrepit, decayed buildings, the elderly Michele feels the rough surface of a wooden charm.

Her eyes, her narration tells us, are no longer good - she must use her hands to see the charm. It reminds her of her childhood, and as she continues to narrate her recollections the film flashes back to when she was a young girl.

The young Michele enters a field to find a young girl, Marie, sobbing. The girl she is crying because she has no one to play with. Michele offers to play with her, and the delighted Marie promptly shows Michele the wooden charm - or "moon goddess", as she calls it - and invites to come and play with it.

They rush back to Marie's bedroom, where she explains that the moon goddess has magical powers that will allow them to travel through time and space. Clutching the charm tightly, the girls are transported through Marie's storybook - represented here via colourful illustrations as Michele's narration continues.

The girls then dream of what being grown up will be like. Will they get to go to New York, they wonder ... and they use the charm to travel forward in time to their adulthood, and to take them to their dream city.

But New York is a big scary place, and the girls become separated. One barely survives a mugging by slashing her female aggressor's throat, while the other shares the dream-within-a-dream with her friend. Oh, and vampires obviously feature while the pair are in New York ...

In-between these travels, we go back occasionally to the mourning Michele, who says she cannot live without Marie in her life. But where is Marie? What fate befell her?

If it all sounds a tad confusing, it isn't. Not really. LOST IN NEW YORK is difficult to synopsise due it's non-linear plot structure, flitting backwards and forwards through different periods of the girls' lives, and it's deeply personal style: this is director Jean Rollin (FASCINATION; THE LIVING DEAD GIRL; THE GRAPES OF DEATH) at his most self-indulgent, filming travelogue footage with two actresses while on a fortnight's break in America, then producing some additional mystical footage to weave a metaphorical storyline around his holiday footage.

The additional footage - the linking scenes that suggest the girls are merely indulging their imaginations and there is no real magic at play, a'la HEAVENLY CREATURES - is mainly set on beaches, which is hardly surprising given Rollin's other works.

Metaphor, as mentioned above, is used heavily throughout. A black dancer symbolises the imagined magical qualities of the moon goddess charm; New York is seen as a foreboding, alien place - symbolic of the adulthood the girls simultaneously crave and fear.

LOST IN NEW YORK is an interesting addition to Rollin's profile. It's only 51 minutes long and doesn't deliver the gothic lesbianism or gore of his more well-known movies, but moves at a languid pace to allow us time to take in the dreamlike concept and beautiful arthouse visuals.

My main reservation is the lack of structure. It's not that I'm opposed to films that toy with convention, but in this case the lack of dialogue and storyline combine to make LOST IN NEW YORK ever so slightly tedious.

You get the feeling there should be some profound sense of revelation at the end, and yet - while the finale is oddly haunting - there's nothing there.

Still, it's nice to see a rarely-seen Rollin work finally arrive on DVD.

Redemption's transfer is a little soft, but generally good. It's presented in a non-anamorphic 1.77:1 aspect ratio.

The French mono audio holds up well throughout, and the optional English subtitles are easy to read.

Static menus include a scene-selection page allowing access to the movie via 6 chapters (although there's actually 7).

Extras include a photo gallery of 10 movie stills, trailers for three other Redemption titles (CITY OF THE DEAD, VENUS IN FURS and 99 WOMEN) and a selection of audio tracks from Redemptions line in indie music.

Best of the extra features are two early short films from Rollin. The first, LES PAYS LOINS is a 15-minute black-and-white affair with breathless camera work, some stunning compositions and French mono narration with forced English subtitles. It reminded me of Jean Luc Goddard in a curious way - not obvious in any way as being a Rollin piece.

More obviously Rollin was the beach-set LES AMOURS JAUNES. This film's only 10 minutes long, but again is filled with stunning contrasting black-and-white visuals, as well as a French mono soundtrack with forced English subtitles.

Both films have excellent video and audio quality.

While the main feature may be a little too arty and self-indulgent for most tastes, it deserves to be seen as one of Rollin's "harder to find" pieces. It's nice to see it out on UK DVD, and Redemption should be commended for including the two excellent short movies too.

Review by Stu Willis