Queerguru’s Robert Malcolm reviews ‘PEACHES GOES BANANAS’ the story of an electro-clash rocker, feminist and queer icon

Peaches is the stage name of Canadian electro-clash rocker, feminist and queer icon, Merrill Nisker. She took the name from a Nina Simone song, Four Women, which ends in a scream “My name is Peaches!” Her most famous song Fuck the Pain Away was used in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 movie Lost in Translation as well as being featured on the soundtracks of several well known films and TV shows.Peaches Goes Bananas is a portrait of the transgressive performer made over 17 years by Belgian director Marie Losier. Recorded with a Bolex camera on 16mm film and with sound added later, the film feels like a superior home movie. Its non-linear structure appears to have been formed, not from a storyboard, but from the creative editing of existing footage.Marie Losie first met the performer in Brussels in 2006. She was making a documentary about the late Genesis P-Orridge when their band Psychic TV was opening for Peaches. She began her fascination with the artist then, and has documented her life ever since.The film is presented in sections (my analysis) :*Prologue. Vaginoplasty rap.*2022 European concert tour on stage and backstage in Paris.*Photo shoots, make up, costumes and discussions about ageing bodies.*An early concert singing Fuck the Pain Away, possibly in Brussels.*In Berlin with her boyfriend.*With her sister and her carers.*With her parents in Toronto.*Toronto concert with the song Fatherfuckers.*Singing for children in a YMCA daycare centre when she was a folk singer.*Rehearsing for Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo in Berlin, 2021.*The death of her sister and her song I Don’t Want to Lose You.*Final concert footage of the song Dumb Fuck.*Epilogue. Intimate performance getting messy topless, on a table with brightly coloured erotic party food.The stage persona of Peaches is very different from Merrill Nisker.Peaches is a filthy-mouthed, sex obsessed punk goddess. Merrill is a funny, family oriented person, who lives simply with her boyfriend, and gets anxious when not working or touring. She is not overtly sexual, as some fans seem to expect.Her work focuses on the female body, sex and gender identity. She lists her visual influences as John Waters, Cindy Sherman and Paul McCarthy, and musically Wendy O. Williams. Recently she has been using her own body to show that body positivity can be displayed at any age. She wants to “make ageing cool” by her own example.Her 2022 concerts include a circus of acrobats and dancers, nearly naked, in flesh coloured Lycra with giant stuffed prosthetics attached, most often multiple breasts like ancient fertility goddesses. She herself arrives on stage like an old Miami matron in fluffy slippers, hot pink satin jacket and bikini, and a huge realistic vagina hat aided by a walking frame. She quickly undresses down to tight nude see through underwear which leaves little to the imagination.But this film is as much about the private life of Merrill Nesker as the on stage antics of Peaches. We learn of her close relationship with her older sister who developed multiple sclerosis in her twenties and died of the disease. We also meet her doting parents who despite her taboo breaking performances, have always supported her. And we see the affectionate way that she and her boyfriend interact with each other.

With rather too many make up and hairdressing scenes, we additionally note with interest, how her signature Ziggy Stardust mullet has developed over the years.

But the most fascinating section of the film is her preparation to sing the part of Orfeo in Monteverdi’s Opera of the same name. She is playing a male rôle and her voice has a hauntingly primitive quality.One wonders if the subject matter of a singer entering Hell to find a dead lover chimes with her own work? And what is the significance of the set, which features a miniature version of Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage in Dungeness?What we are missing in this documentary however, is a complete biography of Peaches. Her previous bands, her journey from folk to punk, past relationships with men and women, her thyroid cancer, and her move to Berlin are all left untouched. But then that’s another film.This documentary will delight existing and new fans of Peaches but if you are not familiar with her music and are over familiar with the avant-garde’s preoccupation with the human body and sexual transgression, you may find this film uninteresting.

 

 

Robert Malcolm is an Interior Designer who relocated from London to his home town of Edinburgh in 2019. Under the pen name of Bobby Burns he had his first novel, a gay erotic thriller called Bone Island published by Homofactus Press in 2011.