The Madwoman of the Sacred Heart

Underground filmmaker (El Topo) and French comics legend Jean ""Moebius"" Giraud (The Man from the Ciguri) have concocted a bizarre sexual religio-philosophic farce that nearly defies description. Alan Zacharias Mangel, professor of religion and philosophy at the Sorbonne, has abandoned the study of Heidegger and Kant to become the center of a mystical cult--that is, until his wife, indelicately blaming his impotence, announces both an affair with a member of his circle and her desire for a divorce at, of all places, his birthday party. Reeling from this affront, he is pursued by Elizabeth, a beautiful but apparently disturbed student who declares that, like the biblical Elizabeth and Zacharias, they are prophesied to make love so that she may give birth to a new world prophet. Prodded by his horny superego (Mangel's younger self, in skin-tight black T-shirt) and his pregnant otherworldly lover, Mangel finds himself in the grip of a wildly comic divine prophecy--the outrageously carnal recreation of the Madonna myth with an Arab drug addict as Joseph and the voluptuous daughter of a Colombian drug cartel boss as a contemporary Virgin Mary, sent to save the world. Alternately amusing and cheerfully dumb, this entertaining narrative manages a fair level iconoclasm, invoking (or lampooning, you be the judge) white European racism, French anti-Semitism, anti-clerical blasphemy and an undiluted anti-Puritanism. Although Moebius is a brilliant draftsman, the b&w drawings are well done but only rarely exceptional. (Aug.)