Matty unearths a real curio and finds it to be an important first step in the career of its maverick helmer.

Naturally, given his background, writer/producer/director Serge Rodnunsky’s debut feature, BOLD STROKE, opens with a lively dance number. The sequence feels like the former professional dancer underlining his transition from busting a move to filmmaking. More dancing is peppered throughout, Rodnunsky using these energetic bursts of choreographed abandon to emphasise key moments in Bold Stroke’s story. 

Financed through family and friends, and shot on 16mm, Bold Stroke exudes a handmade quality. Part vanity project, part glorified home movie; it’s technically crude and ridiculously pompous and indulgent, but endearingly so. While the sound appears to have been recorded and mixed in a shed, and the herky-jerky, handheld photography screams ‘amateur hour’ rather than ‘Cassavetes’, there are several strikingly lit scenes and some genuinely arresting visuals to counteract the slop.

Watched in accordance with Rodnunsky’s subsequent output, Bold Stroke is clearly the work of a rookie auteur finding his voice; something itself wholly in keeping with the themes of search and discovery present in the vast majority of the prolific B-movie peddler’s later material. The idea is the root of Bold Stroke’s plot, which sees an artist trying to find his place in the art world. Adding a layer of meta-referential tomfoolery is the fact that said artist – a fairly unlikable shmo named Alex – is played by Rodnunsky himself.   

The rest of Rodnunsky’s obsessions and stylistic hallmarks – relationships and morally questionable characters, flashes of arthouse pretension, an atonal sense of pace – are present in embryonic form. Struggling to finish his latest creations – and, in a throwaway bit of business never really expanded upon, plagued by surreal, Ken Russell-esque breaks in reality – Alex’s mojo is fired up when he begins an affair with an exotic dancer, Katrina (Anne Thomas). However, a la the femme fatales in Rodnunsky’s ‘best known’ caper, Dead Tides (1997), and the dames in several of his other kooky relationship drama/genre flick hybrids, the coke-snorting Katrina isn’t straight forward. As well as being dubiously motivated, she’s the squeeze of a violent criminal (Denis Mendel) — and neither he nor his associates take kindly to mopey ol’ Alex entering their orbit… 

Also known as ‘Brush with Death’, Bold Stroke is a challenging watch and hardly conventional entertainment, but succeeds as an interesting experience for the adventurous. Unreleased in the U.S. and U.K., the film was acquired by Marco Colombo, Alan Stewart and Christian Halsey Solomon’s Filmtrust Motion Picture Licensing. It surfaced on tape in the Netherlands via Arrow (no, not that one) and in Brazil via New Line Home Video (no, not that one either).

USA ● 1990 ● Drama ● 88mins

Serge Rodnunsky, Anne Thomas, Denis Mendel ● Dir./Wri. Serge Rodnunsky