The Grape Dealer’s Daughter

Gutman is the somewhat elderly Wall Street financial adviser who two years ago commissioned George Kuchar (The Sins of the Fleshapoids) to make a film celebrating his (Gutman’s) affection for ‘strong women” (Unstrap Me). In this new film Gutman, as his own director and star (and occasionally his own cameraman), continues that curious celebration in the form of film fantasy. Gutman, ostensibly searching for a girl to play ‘the grape dealer’s daughter’ photographs quite a lot of round, ripe, beautiful girls, in various stages of nudity. On the soundtrack, he folk-philosophizes on such things as women (‘a mother is something like a man, except she’s prettier, until she gets pregnant’) and his roots in Chicago ( his grand-father was a founder of the first Jewish golf club in the Middle West). Gutman also discusses American history as if to establish himself a kind of end product of The Dream. The climactic scene of the 90 minute film is a grape filled orgy in which Gutman and his leading lady strip (she completely, he at first only to his blue cotton Bloomingdale’s boxer shorts) and rub grapes all over their bodies. The movie, funny in a mock horrible way, is another example of the under-ground movie-as-exorciser of reality. It’s almost as if Gutman had decided that the only way to play the role of Dirty Old Man was to become the total Dirty Old Man, who by making a movie, canonises himself and his role in life.