Here's what the Tribeca Film Festival organizers warned Madonna fans about the premiere of her "Confessions II" on Friday night: It's "an ambitious visual work, over 10 minutes long, built around the first six tracks of Madonna's upcoming album." This is what they ended up seeing: a surreal polyptych of women with lasers shooting out of their private parts, Benedict Cumberbatch vogueing in a bathtub, and Madonna in all her many guises—from a vulnerable, lonely songwriter to an acrobatic gymnast who can even be danced on a moving table.
In addition to Madonna, the 13-minute short film features 16 celebrities, including Sabrina Carpenter, Fade, Debi Mazar, Kate Moss, Julia Garner, Odessa Azion, Richard E. Grant, Honey Dijon, and Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon. Featuring stunning visuals and song excerpts from Madonna's upcoming album, Confessions II , a kind of continuation Confessions on a Dance Floor With the 2005 release slated for July 3rd, including "I Feel So Free" and "Bring Your Love," the long wait until tonight, when audiences hadn't yet had the chance to see the film in Yondr cases, was worth it. (The rest of the world will have to wait until Monday to see the film on YouTube.)
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But, of course, we can't forget Madonna herself. Some twenty-six hours after her Times Square performance that literally paralyzed traffic, the 67-year-old artist entered New York's Beacon Theatre through the doors stage right, wearing a large white feathered coat, a sparkly dress, and dark sunglasses, and, under the flashbulbs of photographers, made her way to her seat. After the film ended with Lourdes Leon's "Stop, bitch," and the credits rolled, Madonna made her way onstage for a Q&A with the film's directors, David Toro and Solomon Chase, known as TORSO, moderated by Anderson Cooper because the original host, Jimmy Fallon, was inexplicably unable to attend. This is what people paid money for.
Over the course of 45 minutes, Madonna spoke candidly and at length about a wide range of topics: her disdain for cell phones, which she says prevent people from communicating with each other («everyone [at Coachella] had their phones open, and I didn’t know what anyone looked like»); her memories of the opening of Detroit’s gay clubs («everyone was free»); and her feeling out of place in New York City, which led her to read F. Scott Fitzgerald («not «The Great Gatsby »"") in clubs; about kissing Mazar "just to get guys"; about the physical demands of live performances and repeatedly dodging Cooper's questions about the upcoming tour ("Maybe there will be one"); and, of course, about the film, which she assured everyone is not a music video.
«"I love the idea of cinema because I'm a cinephile, a film buff, and cinema has inspired a lot of my life," she said, before adding, echoing Norma Desmond, "Somehow, the word video seems cheap. It was great when it was just MTV and me.".
And while the film bore all the hallmarks of a big, showy Madonna music video, right down to the highly sexualized imagery the prudish MTV crowd would surely have banned, it also felt unique, less a music video and less a short film than a wild, eerie bedtime story you could lose your mind in. Previously unreleased songs ("Good for the Soul," "One Step Away," "Danceteria," and "Read My Lips") pulsed with the same easy-to-dance rhythms as the singles, and it all coalesced into a fever dream. "I'm a storyteller, so the emotional journey, the narrative, and [TORSO] are something from another planet, and they're thinking about the environment and the visual dopamine rush.".
The film opens with Madonna alone in a room, chased by women in lingerie with cameras, until suddenly she finds herself in a forest, with a white light shining from her crotch… then the shot switches to green lasers coming out of the rotating vaginas of women in doggy style, and from the buttocks of people having sex in doggy style. "I really have to give credit to those guys for the visual effects in every location," Madonna said, nodding to the directors of TORSO. "In particular, I never would have imagined lasers coming out of women's vaginas. Honestly, I really wanted to try it, but apparently it gets pretty hot.".
The film features a gay club where Madonna and Carpenter sing and Garner dances, a bathroom where she makes out with men she pulls out of urinals (while Mazar and Cumberbatch dance), Fade in front of a mirror, women in black latex engaging in BDSM while eating bananas, and Lourdes Leon, who gets the loudest applause of any cameo appearance from the Beacon audience, closing the film.
«"I initially thought about asking her [to star in the film], but she always turns down anything that has to do with her," Madonna said. "We wrote a song together that's on my album. It's called 'The Test.' It's beautiful. We wrote it in the studio at the same time, and it became a kind of healing moment between us.".
«"I'm so proud of her," she continued. "She's incredibly talented, much more talented than me. I'm not saying that because I'm her mom.".
The film took six months to make, filming in London, Los Angeles and New York, and was part of Madonna's year-and-a-half-long work on the album. Confessions II . The artist said she decided to record a dance album to take her mind off the wait for the release of the films and TV series she was working on. All the songs on the record, she said, fit together harmoniously. "The record itself is one long story," she said. "We wanted to make it danceable from start to finish, to take you on a journey. Toward the end, it becomes a little more thoughtful, emotional, and intimate.".
Ultimately, it's all about how music affects you physically and metaphysically. "I don't want to make meaningless music," she said. "I want to make music that says something. Dance music makes you move your body, it makes you feel a pulse. It's like you're connecting with the universe, you're connecting with other people.".
And connection is what's most important to Madonna right now. "The film is really about connection," she said. "I'm leaving my apartment and going straight into the woods where people are shooting lasers out of their asses. Just go through life, take risks, be curious, be observant... And put your damn phones down and connect.".
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