Recommendations of the Editorial team
Of course, there is “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Plus “Flash Gordon” and “Highlander”. Queen are a part of film history, Rami Malek even received an Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury. Songs by the British band can also be heard in many other films. No one will ever forget the headbanging in “Wayne’s World.” And how comically do the zombies dance to “Don’t Stop Me Now” in “Shaun Of The Dead”?
However, the strangest film to ever feature a Queen song is “Carne” (meat) by Marco Ferreri from 1991. The story revolves around a divorced bar pianist named Paolo (played by Sergio Castellitto). One evening he meets the extremely attractive and buxom Francesca (Francesca Dellera) in a nightclub. Francesca has just returned from a guru in India. She has a special “Far Eastern technique” with which she can physically stimulate Paolo so that he falls into a state of permanent erection, but at times can hardly move.
Paolo leaves his job for her and neglects his children (whom he obviously only loves a little more than his dog, who, for reasons of space, has to stay with his ex, whom he mockingly calls Hyena). The two barricade themselves in Paolo’s beach house south of Rome. They fill the fridge to the top and spend weeks eating and having sex. Paolo drifts into a delusion in which he sees this sexual fusion as a religious, divine experience.
However, when Francesca becomes pregnant, she loses all desire and wants to leave him. For fear of losing her, the completely insane Paolo sees only one way out so that he can “communicate” with her forever and be one with her.
Why Queen’s “Innuendo” can be heard in “Carne”.
For the most part a sometimes bilious, sometimes silly farce, “Carne” surprises with a bawdy ending that does full justice to its title. No wonder, the director was considered the enfant terrible of European cinema at least since the cinematic inedibility of “The Big Eat” (1973).
Between all the bittersweet messes (which are anything but explicitly shown), the flamenco intermezzo of “Innuendo” can be heard completely unexpectedly. After “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the “Prophet’s Song” on “A Night At The Opera”, Queen’s late return to their theatrical bombast pieces and the title song of the last record before Freddie Mercury’s death. There are other components of the 6.5-minute song in “Carne”, like a secret musical commentary on the Gaga plot of the film, which also borrows from Plato’s “Banquet” and imbues the Eucharist with cocoa.
Whatever drove Ferreri to use Queen, the timing is of course delicate. The song (January 14th), the album (February 4th) and the film (premiered in May during the Cannes Film Festival) were all released in 1991. Queen once again managed to produce one last powerful record, which was more in the direction of their 70s grandeur than following the path of 80s stadium pop-rock again.
While the term ‘Innuendo’ in English means an ambiguous, sometimes slippery remark – which Ferreri probably understood as a motivation for the placement in “Carne” – Queen’s song takes on a completely different level of meaning. It addresses the inability of humanity to live peacefully with one another and can also be understood as a metaphor for the sick singer’s final struggle. Despite all the blows of fate and the certainty of the approaching end, he appeals not to give up hope, to be courageous and to fight for your freedom and dreams until the end of time.
Solid criticism for a solid film
Ferreri, on the other hand, uses the wild, dramatic dynamics of the song to acoustically reflect the main character’s slide from love intoxication into madness – with the final punchline already mentioned but not revealed here. Of course, the critics in Cannes also noticed how strange “Carne” is. There were loud protests, boos and expressions of disgust at the blatant link between religion and sex.
Francesca Dellera, dubbed the “most beautiful woman in the world” in her native Italy, was almost pitied. Many felt that she lacked the talent to act, but found it even more tragic that she was reduced to a hypnotic, living special effect in the film. You don’t learn much about male and female desire. But that’s probably also because the director was less concerned with an erotic grotesque than with criticizing Western consumer society using the means of similar film material. So “Carne” is also a (not quite as successful, but interestingly failed) parable of a world in which everything – even your partner – has to be consumed, possessed and ultimately “eaten up”.
Accusations of blasphemy were, of course, inevitable. After all, Queen were familiar with that – for “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the video for “It’s A Hard Life” there was tinder from church watchmen. But “Innuendo” has a surprising position in connection with “Carne”: Later on, hardly any songs from the British were heard in a similar arthouse quarrel.
“Carne” is currently streaming for free on Amazon Prime Video