Contemporary Literary Criticism | The Brothers Quay - David Edelstein (review date 5 May 1987)

David Edelstein (review date 5 May 1987)

SOURCE: "Double Your Pleasure," in The Village Voice, Vol. XXXII, No. 18, May 5, 1987, p. 66.

[In the following positive review of The Brothers Quay, Edelstein describes scenes from the four films and comments on the theme of decay, a common element in several of the works.]

The Brothers Quay are 39-year-old American twins who live in London and make the damnedest little movies with puppets, primitive machines, and the occasional animal organ. For only a week, the Film Forum will introduce New York audiences to four of their films—74 intense, hypnotic minutes' worth. Their camera floats among wires, rickety scaffolding, Expressionist scenery; artifice is frankly acknowledged, even celebrated. The movements of the puppets are slightly jerky, as in the early work of Méliès or King Kong; elsewhere, the textures are squishy and pulsating. The Quays like decay. It's the combination of...

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