Introduction to an Obscene Homage

Nikos Nikolaidis's uncompromising Singapore Sling (1990) opens to the violent sounds of a thunderstorm. ‘Marni Film’ appears against a black background, before giving way to a black-and-white shot of torrential rain flooding some low-lit steps, among heavy vegetation. A version of the well-known musical theme from Otto Preminger's Laura (1944) slowly fades in. The film's title appears, followed by the production year, which is inscribed at the bottom left, next to the copyright credits, if only to remind us that what we are about to watch is not Preminger, but a rather perverted version of the Austrian-American director's classic noir. In the next shot – a beautiful close-up of a small stream pouring out of a brick wall in the rain – the subtitle of the film appears in Greek, reading: ‘The Man Who Loved a Corpse’. In no more than two shots, Nikolaidis introduces his audience to his film's cynical, twisted yet visually sophisticated tone, mood and feel.

The rest of the title sequence is a series of similar, sharply contrasted, black-and-white shots of heavy rain falling on rich vegetation. The lyricism of the wet landscape is awkwardly disturbed by the spectacle of two women, Mother (Michelle Valley) and Daughter (Meredyth Herold), struggling to dig a pit in the ground, dressed in heavy raincoats over baroque lingerie that leaves little to the imagination, as their private parts are generously exposed. Before things get too parodic with the two semi-naked women digging in the mud, the orchestral strings of the Laura theme give way to a jazzier tune; the film crossfades to a shot of a man lying on the ground, dressed in a raincoat: the Detective (Panos Thanassoulis). Between close-ups of his bleeding hand, his exhausted face and the relentless rain falling heavily on bodies and surfaces, the man starts to narrate his fruitless endeavour to investigate the case of a missing girl named Laura, in a quasi-lyrical voiceover. With his shoulder wounded by a bullet, the Detective slowly crawls to reach an old-fashioned car parked nearby; he manages to pull his body into the back seat in an effort to hide himself from the odd women who, unruffled, pull the corpse of their chauffeur from behind the bushes – as the Daughter suggestively confesses to the camera – in order to bury it.