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Nasrin wants to divorce her husband, but knows she won’t be able to get custody of her six-year-old daughter if she does. So, unbeknown to her husband, she and her daughter move to another part of town where Nasrin finds a job at a hospital crèche. One day her husband catches up with her and their lives take an unexpected turn.Read More »
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Koji Wakamatsu, who in the past has directed such pungently titled exploitation flicks as Go Go Be a Virgin a Second Time and Violated Women in White, spins this biopic about jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe (Ko Machida) and his wife, noted writer Izumi Suzuki (Reona Hirota). A sort of Sid and Nancy for the free-jazz set, the film opens with Suzuki dialing a wrong number and getting Abe. Instead of hanging up, he asks her out on a date and soon the two are shacked up and living together. Sex, drugs and Ornette Coleman feature prominently in the early phase of their relationship, and soon they realize that they are in fact soulmates. Abe is a romantic artist as well as a self-destructive, self-absorbed manchild prone to angry tirades and epileptic seizures. In turn, Izumi is first presented as a bubble-headed hippie chick who goes through men like tissues, but as her relationship with Abe deepens into marriage and evidently motherhood, Izumi reveals a steel will and pragmatism, refusing to sacrifice herself to Abe’s muse. Their tempestuous relationship grows increasingly destructive. ~ Jonathan Crow, RoviRead More »
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A twentysomething bisexual takes many wrong turns down blind alleys in his search for affection and understanding in this drama from France. Antonin (Hubert Benhamdine) is a young man who is desperate for love and thinks he’s found it with Alex (Franck Victor), a handsome and talented musician. However, Alex is also a heroin addict, and when he succumbs to an overdose, Antonin is crushed and begins drowning his sorrows in anonymous and often degrading sex. Antonin becomes a prostitute and frequently finds himself infatuated with his clients, but most treat him with contempt except for Baptiste (Hicham Nazzal), who shows some compassion for the troubled young man. Sadly, history repeats itself and Antonin once again falls for a dope addict, a beautiful but damaged woman named Juliette (Caroline Ducey). The first feature film from photographer Hormoz, J’Ai Rêvé Sous l’Eau (aka I Dreamt Under the Water) also stars Christine Boisson.Read More »
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The poet as scrounger-pimp-saint, his life and death. “Long live us thieves… we always know where to go.” Accattone “the cardboard man” (Franco Citti) in the Roman lower depths of dirty sidewalks and angelic statues, a terrain at once squalid and exalted. He ambles around the slums, soaks in his own thick mythology, is reminded of shame by the wife he abandoned (Paola Guidi), and apologizes to his son with one hand while stealing from him with the other. Madonna (Adele Cambria) at home with armfuls of children and Mary Magdalene (Silvana Corsini) in the streets, beaten up for kicks by idle mugs with peculiarly ethereal voices. In this netherworld of exploitation and debasement, a fair muse (Franca Pasut) and a prophecy (“You won’t even have your eyes to cry with”). If Pier Paolo Pasolini’s first film displays the appearance of neo-realism, it’s only as a launching pad for the harshest, most stylized assembly of the profane and the sacred; if his terse panning shots bring to mind Cimabue and other old masters, it’s only as a way to bend them. (The central image finds the antihero wetting his face in the ocean, grinding it into the sand and offering it to the camera, a grinning fresco peppered with birdshot.)Read More »
Anna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Filmed in the great tradition of Italian neorealism, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy, and highlights director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascination with the marginalized and dispossessed. Though banned upon its release in Italy for obscenity, today Mamma Roma remains a classic, featuring a powerhouse performance by one of cinema’s greatest actresses and offering a glimpse at a country’s most controversial director in the process of finding his style.Read More »
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Favraux, an unscrupulous banker, receives a threatening note, signed by “Judex”, demanding that he pay back the people he has swindled. He refuses, and apparently dies after a midnight toast at his masked ball. However, he is only drugged by Judex and locked away. Judex spares his life when the banker’s widowed daughter, Jacqueline, rejects the inheritance. Meanwhile Diana Monti, the former governess, kidnaps Jacqueline to try to get the banker’s money. But Judex is hot on her trail.Read More »
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Polish-born Jean Epstein’s Finis Terrae is momentous.
While every film exists on a sliding scale of expression whose opposite poles are documentary and fiction, this film in particular does more than merely combine the two modes; it anticipates generic (as distinct from stylistic) attempts – poetic docudrama; Italian Neorealism – to fuse them. How successful Epstein’s film is remains in dispute; its importance is incontestable.
The initial action is set on Bannec, a Breton islet. It is summer. Two boys, in their teens or, perhaps, early twenties, are on the islet to work. These dear friends are Jean-Marie and Ambroise (played by Jean-Marie Laot and Ambroise Rouzic). They quarrel; Ambroise withdraws from Jean-Marie and another boy in their group as a cut finger causes infection and saps his health. Jean-Marie attempts to row himself to Ouessant, on the mainland, but hasn’t the strength. Braving the elements, which include dense fog, Jean-Marie takes over, attempting to bring Ambroise to a medical doctor; meanwhile, the doctor is heading to Bannec to attend to the sick boy. Will the two vessels miss one another in the fog and tragedy result?
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“De Gérard Blain, on se souvient d’abord de l’acteur qui accompagna les débuts de la Nouvelle-Vague, que ce soit chez Chabrol (le beau Serge , les cousins) ou Truffaut (les mistons). On oublie un peu trop vite qu’il fut également un cinéaste passionnant, laissant une œuvre (huit films) marginale et secrète qu’on aimerait pouvoir découvrir plus facilement.Read More »
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Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie’s siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie’s Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.Read More »