Anna Biller doesn’t agree with the idea that her movies are “camp.” This can be difficult for some viewers (and reviewers) to understand, given the heightened melodrama and stylized filmmaking that define this all-in auteur’s work. But — whether intentional or unintentional — camp has a winking detachment to it that doesn’t jive with Biller’s sensibilities. Are her films extravagantly rendered? Yes. Old-fashioned? Sure, in some ways. But insincere? Never.
Biller is all in, both in terms of the minute technical aspects of her work and in the operatic gender dynamics of her plots. In Biller’s films, beautiful women suffering for the love of selfish, craven men is just the way of the world. It’s true in 14th-century England, where her latest film The Face of Horror takes place, just as it was in ‘70s suburban L.A. in her debut feature Viva (2007) and in the timeless alternate San Francisco of The Love Witch (2016).
