Possibly In Michigan (Cecelia Condit, 1983)

“It is funny that you mention David Lynch,” says Pennsylvania filmmaker Cecelia Condit, in an interview with the journal River’s Edge. “In 1967-68, we were in a painting class together…He was making films and I remember him telling me I should make films, too. Oddly, I didn’t realize that he was the same David who was in my class until just a few years ago. A pleasant surprise!”

And, since we did just mention David Lynch — Possibly in Michigan, Condit’s very eighties, literally tone-deaf mini-opera about two young women making literal mincemeat of a male aggressor, shares a number of his favourite themes. “Sharon had a way of attracting violent men,” the voiceover begins, outlining what is basically the treatment for an unmade film by Condit’s classmate. “Her friend Janice was cut from the same mould. They even liked the same perfume. Arthur, who had been following them closely, was similarly disposed. The three of them had two out of three things in common: violence, and perfume.”

“Do you remember that guy I kissed,” one girl sing-songs, horribly and very funnily. “It turned out he used to eat all of his female friends?” Arthur, who is subsequently eaten, wears a rubber mask whose mouth hangs open, and appears in the periphery of almost every shot. Sharon and her best friend Janice act like Lynchian doubles, sound maybe half as tuneful as the Lady In The Radiator, and treat men about the same way Sarah Palmer, in Twin Peaks: The Return, treats that guy who wears the t-shirt reading TRUCK YOU at the Roadhouse. Best of all, they celebrate their victory the same way that all good feminist-cum-cannibals do: by smoking in the nude.

PS