Film

Of Freaks and Men

A 1998 Russian film set in early-20th-century St. Petersburg, where a photographer's underground erotic business infiltrates the lives of two aristocratic families. It's provocative and darkly comic, mixing absurdist humor with genuine unease. For viewers who prize formal audacity and don't flinch from sex as subject matter.

TMDb rating3.3

If you liked this

Stalker1979

Tarkovsky's sci-fi masterpiece about desire and obsession, structured like a journey through philosophical zones. Shares the same intellectual ambition and willingness to make viewers sit with discomfort.

But Glacially paced, nearly three hours, and philosophically dense in ways that demand active engagement rather than passive watching.

Stalker poster

Naked Lunch1991

Cronenberg's adaptation of Burroughs is similarly provocative, sexually explicit, and formally fractured. Both films refuse to apologize for their subject matter while maintaining artistic rigor.

But Surreal and frequently grotesque; the narrative logic is deliberately fractured, which some find pretentious rather than purposeful.

Naked Lunch poster

A Clockwork Orange1971

Kubrick's controversial study of violence, sexuality, and state control uses formal technique as moral argument. Both films weaponize discomfort as a tool rather than indulgence.

But Genuinely shocking and morally queasy; it's easy to misread as endorsing what it's critiquing, which remains contested.

A Clockwork Orange poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Of Freaks and Men

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Come and See1985

Both are Russian/Soviet films that use formal provocation and tonal instability to force viewers into complicity with historical cruelty—not to exploit it, but to make denial impossible.

Elem Klimov's Soviet war film is a formally audacious, almost hallucinogenic document of atrocity. Like *Of Freaks and Men*, it uses shocking imagery and tonal dissonance—mixing horror with grotesque comedy—to make historical violence unforgettable and unprocessable.

But Genuinely traumatic; it's one of the most disturbing films ever made. The depiction of violence and suffering is literal and relentless, without catharsis or moral comfort.

Come and See poster
More like this (7)

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's film is also set in a repressed era and uses visual excess and formal control to explore desire operating under constraint. The texture of the cinematography becomes the subject.

But Deliberately slow and sensual rather than narrative-driven; the story is almost secondary to the mood and image.

In the Mood for Love poster

The Piano Teacher2001

Haneke's Austrian drama is equally transgressive about sexuality and class, with a protagonist whose desires are complicated and darkly comedic. Both films treat perversion as a form of social critique.

But Intensely uncomfortable viewing with graphic sexual content; the main character is deeply unlikeable and the film offers no moral reassurance.

The Piano Teacher poster

Persona1966

Bergman's meditation on identity, performance, and the impossibility of authentic connection. Both films suggest that image-making and deception are fundamental to human relations.

But Explicitly avant-garde; long stretches of silence and abstraction will alienate viewers looking for conventional narrative momentum.

Persona poster

Mulholland Drive2001

Lynch's exploration of Hollywood, desire, and the constructed self uses fractured storytelling and sexual content to probe how fantasy shapes reality. Similar moral ambiguity about who we can trust.

But Deliberately nonlinear and open to interpretation; many find it baffling on first viewing, and rewatching demands significant mental labor.

Mulholland Drive poster

Theorem1968

Pasolini's Marxist provocation about a mysterious stranger who disrupts a bourgeois family through desire and seduction. Shares the same interest in sexuality as a tool for social and spiritual critique.

But Philosophically abstract and methodical; the pacing is deliberate to the point of feeling static, and the sexual content is presented matter-of-factly rather than dramatically.

Theorem poster

The Idiots1998

Both films use deliberately offensive subject matter and unstable tone to examine how the body becomes a text—how transgression and performance can be sincere critiques of bourgeois hypocrisy.

Lars von Trier's Dogme manifesto film about middle-class Danes performing mental disability as liberation. It shares *Of Freaks and Men*'s dark comedy about performance, transgression as social critique, and the fuzzy line between art and exploitation.

But Shaky handheld video, no conventional narrative, and scenes of simulated disability that many will find offensive or insufferable rather than thought-provoking.

The Idiots poster

The Seventh Seal1957

Both films treat historical setting as a lens for contemporary spiritual crisis—the past as a mirror for how we construct meaning, identity, and desire when traditional structures are collapsing.

Bergman's medieval allegory about mortality, faith, and the performance of meaning seems worlds away, but both films are about human beings trying to impose order and narrative on chaos. Death and desire are equally abstract, equally inescapable.

But Explicitly philosophical and theological; if you find Bergman ponderous, this will feel like a three-hour seminar rather than cinema. The blackness of the humor is easy to miss.

The Seventh Seal poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by

One Step Beyond