Ecdysiast

ecdysiast



Y

[ek-diz-ee-ast, -ist] 



D



–noun 

stripper (def. 3).  



3. Also called ecdysiast, exotic dancer, stripteaser. a person who performs a striptease. 





Already the subject of considerable [ink], Swedish master Ingmar Bergman's posthumous reputation—or "overrated career," as Jonathan Rosenbaum put it in a New York Times op-ed obit—should get a boost from a two-week run of his 1953 Monika. 



obit

–noun 

1. Informal. an obituary. 

2. the date 

of 

a person's death. 



3. Obsolete. a Requiem Mass. 



Uneven and sometimes clumsy, Monika doesn't nearly justify Godard's claims, but it's easy to see what impressed him. Bergman's tale of heedless teenage love is a sort of neorealist Rebel Without a Cause—except that sex is acknowledged and the outlaw is a girl. In her rejection of all domestic responsibility, motherhood included, Monika's uninhibited, impulsive, working-class protagonist is a natural [foe] of bourgeois morality. 



Andersson, who'd been a teenage ecdysiast before Bergman "discovered" her, would subsequently act in eight of his films, most notably as the God-haunted schizophrenic in Through a Glass Darkly. She was more recently a resident of Dogville. It's her Monika, however, who haunts Breathless—[evoked] in the famous close-up where Jean Seberg looks deep into the camera and coolly stares us down. 



November 14 through 27, IFC Center. 





leer

a lascivious or sly look.

I can't [con]centrate with you leering [at] me.

ogle 

Uncle George got a black eye for [ogling] a lady in the pub.

Henrik, Egerman's son by a previous marriage, is studying theology, but he is constantly being [ogled] by Petra, the maid. 

squint

to look with the eyes partly closed.

to look or glance obliquely or sidewise; look askance.

He squinted through the [tele]scope.

The baby squinted its eyes at the bright [lights]. 



voluptuous 

luscious

carnal

nymphomania sultry gamine tart coquetry slattern



termagant virago 

Nubile

Debauchery