Disruptive poetics in The Five Provocations

ABSTRACT The Five Provocations (2018), Angie Black’s debut low-budget, independent feature film, began production without a script. Free from the requirements of development funding and operating with what she described as a ‘no budget’ model, Black worked with her actors to develop characters and stories in an extended period of improvisation. While improvisation in low budget, independent cinema is not new, Black’s film distinguishes itself in several ways. Firstly, it uses an additional improvisation mode in which performers, working with feminist burlesque traditions, interrupt the narrative at certain key moments. In this way, the film doubles its improvisation. Furthermore, in queering its realism it also naturalises its queerness. Improvisational strategies in low budget, feature filmmaking, and the unpredictability they produce, are often associated with notions of authenticity and realism. Using the cinematic theory of Jacques Rancière to frame a textual analysis of the film, we argue that, while the film works with conventions of realism, it also disrupts them through transgressive performance and cinematic moments that escape its story logic.