Exploitation director Abel Ferrara has finally found a cinematic subject perfectly attuned to his taste for excess and offensiveness. The resulting work is at times hard to watch, but perfectly conveys the grotesque gluttony, corruption and arrogance that characterises the fall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was a towering public intellectual, head of the International Monetary Fund and a candidate in the French Presidential elections when he was accused of sexual assault my a hotel maid in New York, perp walked to prison and put under house arrest. The charges were eventually dropped - the alleged victim's statement scene as problematic although that has since been contested. But the damage had already been done. DSK was politically untouchable and whether he was or wasn't guilty of that particular charge so many vile accusations came out - orgies, drugs, prostitutes, as well as a chauvinistic belief that the elite system would protect him - that his career was over. To this day, DSK is still facing charges ever more heinous, but has also sparked his own brand of conspiracy theory wherein defenders point out the politically convenient timing of the charges that led to his withdrawal from the presidential elections.
