Brother5

"The Burning Sensation" is poorly shot, scatterbrained and lecherously obsessed with showing naked girls at the expense of the interesting art and people of Burning Man. Nohe's leering, lingering shots of women showering or dancing are tacky and the disproportionate screen time devoted to the nudie cuties misses the real point of the weeklong art festival in the desert. Here's just some of what he omitted entirely at the '99 fest: the real-life Thunderdome; the fifteen or twenty rave tents; the one-half scale "Small World" installation which blew up and burned; the firefall; the enormous clock tower; almost all of the art cars; the Burning Man opera; etc. All for what? So he could pack the movie with anonymous women in various states of undress, filmed as clinically distant as wildlife in a safari film (we never meet or hear from any of them.)

He includes some interviews with BM founder Larry Harvey spouting his familiar line (which was well-documented before this travesty of a film) and Q&A with a few other old timers; but beyond that, no effort is made to establish a history, a framework, or a context. This really has the feel of poorly-framed, unplanned home movie footage cut together and transferred to film. The big push it received (a premiere at the American Cinematheque) is inexplicable considering that there are at least two other BM documentaries that are far superior. Given this film's tacky emphasis on breasts, I wouldn't be surprised to see this turn up on Spice Channel or Skinemax, which is a shame, since that will only attract more peeping Tom spectators to come to Burning Man in the future bringing with them their videocameras.

(April, 2000): Just saw a rare print at the American Cinematheque Noir festival and the film knocked my socks off. As evidenced by this performance, Jean Gillie would have been one of the greats of Noir had she not died in 1949. She powers through this film, getting man after man to do her bidding, never taking no for an answer. And the obstacles that would stop a lesser character don't bother her in the least. The problem confronting her: her boyfriend is on death row. Only he knows where $400,000 from a robbery is. And she uses her feminine wiles to persuade him, and two other men, to discern the location of that dough because, *she wants that money.* Even the gas chamber doesn't slow her down ... which is where the slight sci-fi element is introduced. If this turns up on late-night video, set your VCR. You will be amazed.