Julia Holter has unveiled an offbeat video for the song “Les Jeux To You,” off of last year’s Aviary. Directed by Geneva Jacuzzi, who was inspired by the 1968 art film Fando Y Lis by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the surreal video finds Holter eating roses, holding dolls, covering herself and a lover in black paint, dressing in mummy gauze, and far more bizarre and melodramatic moments. Jacuzzi had this to say about the inspiration and idea behind the clip:
“After I heard ‘Les Jeux to You’, images from Fando Y Lis, a film that has always haunted me, flooded my mind and I knew we had to reimagine it. Set in a dystopian future past, the two lovers escape to a mythical city and along the way are confronted with both terrifying figures of the unconscious and joyful memories of the past that accelerate a descent into madness. As a female artist, I felt the need to explore the anima of this myth and reinscribe the imagery as a mode of empowerment of the feminine directorial gaze.
I knew it would be a challenge because it is a controversial film, but it was particularly unsettling to read the recent allegations against its director Alejandro Jodorowsky shortly after we made the video. It made me think more about the project and ultimately reinforced my original intention of reframing the work as a complex and nuanced take on the psychology of self-destructive relationships.
There is a mysterious essence to this story, a sort of psycho-spiritual unravelling that I connect to the surrealist poetry of Julia’s lyrics and music.”
Aviary is Holter’s fifth studio record following 2015’s Have You In My Wilderness. She is embarking on a world tour next week, with a date in Seattle on Wednesday, March 6 at Neumos and will swing by the KEXP Live Room that same day for an in-studio performance at 12 p.m.
Watch the video for “Les Jeux to You” and watch Holter’s KEXP in-studio performance from 2015 below.
"Words I Heard" comes from Holter's forthcoming fifth album Aviary
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