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Youngho is summoned by his father, who is a doctor. Finding him busy with his patients, one of whom is a famous actor, Youngho has to wait. When his girlfriend Juwon moves to Berlin for her studies, Youngho shows up in the city to surprise her. Through her mother, Juwon has found accommodation at the home of an artist whose beauty intimidates her. Some time later, Youngho goes to lunch with his mother who wants to introduce him to a colleague – it is the same man Youngho met at his father’s clinic. Youngho asks his friend Jeongsoo to accompany him, and after lunch they go to the beach. Youngho falls asleep, and dreams of Juwon. When he wakes up, he braves the considerable cold and goes swimming, while Jeongsoo watches.Read More »

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The Italian filmmaker Paolo Benvenuti is little known outside of Italy, although several recent festival retrospectives have begun opening the world’s eyes to this iconoclastic director. His 1992 work Confortorio is set during one long night in 1736 Rome, as a group of Catholic high priests attempts to “convert” two Jewish thieves who have been sentenced to death. “Every death has to be comforted; every soul has to be saved,” says one priest; the two stubborn thieves, however, have other plans for their (after)lives, even as their “saviors” move from religious fervor to torture.Read More »

Young girl, born and raised in an isolated farm, is brought to a small town to live with her cousins, her only relatives. Once in town, she encounters great difficulty adapting to city life.Read More »

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Raúl Ruiz’s City of Pirates is (de)composed under the sign of Surrealism, with its trust in ecstasy, scandal, the call of the wild, mystification, prophetic dreams, humour, the uncanny. Given the surprising swerves and disorientations evoking Buñuel and Dalí, and the confidence in a poetic discourse recalling Eluard and Péret, one wonders if Ruiz didn’t elaborate his scenario using the Surrealist mode of automatic writing. Troubled, graceful Isidore – Ducasse and Duncan? – is a purely Surrealist heroine, part Ophelia, Salomé, Bérénice, prone to trances, somnambulism, hysterical seizure, contact with the ‘other side’. Her calm violence links her to the real life murderesses – Germaine Berton, the Papin sisters – exalted by Breton’s circle, and by Jacques Lacan. Indeed, Lacan’s notion of a psychoanalysis in which the analyst stays off his patient’s wavelength, inspired by the idea of ‘surrealist dialogue’ in which paired monologues at cross purposes strike sparks of meaning off each other, underpins the scatty trajectory of Ruiz’s own graphomania, snared this time as the tale of a Pirate’s City.Read More »

Quote: Part of Wakamatsu’s ongoing fascination with sexual predators. It’s an incel film avant la lettre, executed in true Wakamatsu style. Certainly not his most prominent or polished work, though fans of Wakamatsu won’t be disappointed. Others should probably seek out his more famed work first. The film follows a frustrated young man. He yearns to be in the company of a woman, but seems unable to make any kind of meaningful connection with them. When a friend of his offers to share his girlfriend, he accepts reluctantly, but his first sexual experience awakens dark feelings that will drive him to commit violent crimes. Wakamatsu offers another glimpse into the mind of a very troubled soul. It’s certainly not a pleasant film, let alone a titillating one, so if that’s what you’re after you can better skip this one altogether. If on the other hand you like a stylized and frank descent into the rotten mind of a violent pervert, Wakamatsu has you covered.Read More »

A family struggles against the conflicting dictates of nature, spirituality, politics, and free will.Read More »

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In New York City, wedding photographer Al Capetti is being pressured by his girlfriend and assistant, Bea, to get married. Al thinks he doesn’t make enough money to support a family; his answer is embarking on a career as a filmmaker. Meanwhile, Al’s senile mother starts a fire in a boarding house, and he has to decide about putting her in a nursing home. As Bea tires of Al’s lack of commitment, their relationship threatens to go up in flames.Read More »

When the car of Georges, a Parisian architect, breaks down on the motorway, he is helped by Serge, a mechanic and garage owner, who lives in a remote Jura hamlet. The two men, although they do not seem to have anything in common, develop an unexpected friendship…Read More »

Synopsis:
Since his wife’s death, Arthur, a peculiar and severe surgeon, cloisters his teen daughter Lucille inside a strange mansion. Desperate, Lucille tries to commit suicide but ends up with her face burned and bandaged. Arthur, with the assistance of his aunt Ingrid who doesn’t know what he is really doing, prepares a weird skin graft in order to give back Lucille a face, a face that resembles his beloved and deceased wife. To take care of Lucille, the father hires Joan, an attractive nurse with a somber past. Lucille and Joan start a forbidden and passionate love affair…Read More »