Arthouse

By Carlo Chatrian, pardolive.ch

For his return to directing 15 years after La Fidélité, Andrzej Zulawski has chosen one of the most difficult authors to adapt and a text that poses significant challenges, given its constant verbal invention and narrative deviations. Cosmos, written 50 years ago by Witold Gombrowicz, four years before his death, is one of those works that creates a kind of precipitous vertigo.

Zulawski is clear from the start: it only takes a few minutes for the viewer to realize this is no classic adaption of a bourgeois novel. Instead, young Witold’s arrival at the house where he will stay is the entrance to an out-of-the-ordinary universe. A world where sparrows are hanged, where strange arrows take shape on the ceiling, where the television that’s always on for every meal broadcasts incessant images of war, where seduction and repulsion go hand in hand. The thin thread of an investigation – discovering who is responsible for these signs – becomes a metaphor for talking about language. See, for example, the brilliant tirade from the “paterfamilias”.Read More »

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Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s latest feature, Through the Forest is composed of ten meticulously crafted shots, each running for six or seven minutes. Despite this formal rigor, the narrative has a free-flowing, dreamlike quality, taking twists and turns that may leave audiences occasionally puzzled, but also deeply absorbed.

Atmosphere and mood are emphasized over plot, but the story essentially revolves around a young woman named Armelle who is mourning the sudden death of her boyfriend Renaud. She is surrounded by her two sisters, both of whom are troubled by her seeming incapacity to move on. After hearing Armelle describe the vivid dreams she’s been having, in which Renaud materializes to make passionate love to her, the more sympathetic of the sisters suggests she visit a medium to try to communicate directly with him. While at the medium’s, Armelle is shocked to glimpse a boy named Hippolyte, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Renaud.Read More »

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This Portuguese drama examines the daily life minutiae and intrigues of two scions of society in the rural village where they live. One is a wealthy landowner, the other a widowed aristocrat who lives in a world of her own. “Starting off from a fine novel by Carlos de Oliveira, Fernando Lopes doesn’t so mush reconstitute a story, but rather defines an atmosphere parallel to that which exists in the literary work. The erosion of time, the crumbling of an epoch, the decline of a stately home, the disintegration of emotions: the film version of A Bee in the Rain talks about all these things, using a language that is sparse and unpolished, fascinating and at the same time repulsive in its disturbing silence” (Lauro Antonio).Read More »

Synopsis
Assis 2005: a troubadour walks the streets of St. Francis of Assisi hometown, singing and playing the Song of Brother Sun or Song of the Creatures, written by St. Francis back in the winter of 1224. Woods of Umbria, 1212: during one preaching to the birds, St. Francis suddenly faints. Reanimated by St. Clare, the saint looks strange and absent and he doesn’t remember anything. When the night falls, the animals in the forest sing and praise Francis. But this love sung by the animals leads to a feeling of possession, a desire of exclusivity usually known as jealousy.Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
Some memories exist in a borderland. They fill your thoughts; you’re gripped by a sensation of the unreal — “did that really happen?” Snow is about a mother and her son, driving a short distance. She suddenly, unexpectedly, takes a wrong turn.Read More »

Ana lives with the idealistic way of life of a religious family and avoid most subjects related to sex and other tabú themes. But love and rape came to her life and make her sink in a promicuos world that is very well shown by Nilsson.Read More »

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Baal explores the cult of the genius, an anti-heroic figure who chooses to be a social outcast and live on the fringe of bourgeois morality.

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Screening as part of the Masters & Restorations program at this year’s MIFF is Baal, writer/director Volker Schlöndorff’s television adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s play of the same name which features a rare leading performance by Schlöndorff’s contemporary in the German New Wave and master filmmaker Reiner Werner Fassbinder outside of his own films. After a single screening in 1970 it was removed from public release by Brecht’s widow, but 44 years later is making the rounds at film festivals thanks his granddaughter who has approved its release. And thankfully it was worth the wait, offering a rare treat for foreign film fans.Read More »

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An elderly woman in a wheelchair and a hormone driven teenage boy arrive to a beach cabin where, through rare moments of lucidity, she will persuade him to kill her.Read More »

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Aravindan’s debut extended a 60s Calicut modernism into cinema, drawing on the work of the writer Pattathiruvila Karunakaran, who produced the film, and the satirical playwright Thikkodiyan, who co-scripted it. The plot is about a disabused young man, Ravi, who has a series of ironic encounters while looking for a job. One of his mentors, Kumaran Master, and his now critically ill friend Setu had participated in the 1942 Quit India agitations with Ravi’s father (shown in flashback). The lawyer Gopalan Muthalaly, also a participant in those events, has become a rich contractor and an example of the corrupt post-Independence bourgeoisie. Ravi abandons the city and, in a mystical ending, is initiated into ‘eternal truths’ by a godman meditating on a mountain. The figures of the father and the ailing friend form a composite portrait of Sanjayan, a political activist, spiritualist and satirist, and major influence on the Calicut artists who participated in the film. Aravindan’s approach to his lead characters and his framing evoke the cartoon characters Ramu and Guruji from his Small Man and Big World seriesRead More »