Drawing Restraint 9 review

Matthew Barney, auteur of the bizarro Cremaster Cycle, is back with more weirdness – and this time, off-screen partner Bjork is in on the act. The pair star as less-than-chatty guests aboard Japanese whaling ship the Nisshin Maru, performing an elaborate courting ritual as a giant hunk of petroleum jelly is transformed on deck. Though Barney claims the film’s about the tension between creativity and restraint, it’s easily the former that wins out. More a marathon music vid than a narrative flick, its eccentricities range from the mild (hordes of Japanese kitting the stars out in mammal-hair kimonos) to the mental (Barney hacking off bits of his girlfriend’s part-whale body in a tub of goo). For all the self-indulgence, it’s never dull, with Bjork’s lovely ambient soundtrack washing over the startling images.