The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

Seven years in the making, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is a poetic and hypnotic look at the strangely beautiful relationship between performance artist and musician Genesis P-Orridge and her wife, Lady Jaye. Filled with grainy home videos, archival performance footage, and stylized re-enactments, the film follows Genesis, Lady Jaye, and their Pandrogeny Project, an ongoing collaboration in which they experimented with molding their physical bodies into one spiritual self. In 2005, Genesis (born Neil Andrew Megson) underwent breast implant surgery, and later they both had cheek and lip surgeries to further resemble one another. Genesis' transformation from the dark-haired tempest of British electronic music pioneers Throbbing Gristle to the peroxide-blonde leader of a reformed Psychic TV is thought-provoking and extreme, raising issues of gender and socially constructed identity. Experimental filmmaker Marie Losier humanizes Genesis and Lady Jaye by including scenes of them riding the subway, cooking dinner, and enjoying other mundane activities in and around their New York City home, and makes no effort to seem directorially neutral. An unexpected tragedy leads to a bittersweet ending that no one could have envisioned, but the couple's all-consuming love endures, as does their boundary-pushing exploration of what it means to be human.