Margot, who lives in a comfortable middle class apartment, fears that she is losing her mind after having had her second child. Her husband Kurt, who is busy studying for an exam, does not understand her situation. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law Lore are openly hostile to her. She resorts to valium and drink, and looks for sympathy, but to no avail.Read More »
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It perhaps comes as no surprise, given Carl Theodor Dreyer’s lifelong, idealized melancholy over his own unresolved parentage, that the scenario selected for his first film, The President would involve three generations of children conceived out of wedlock, and thematically crystallize on the legacy of their unreconciled paternity in the resolution of their own disparate lives. For Dreyer, this expurgation of such deep-seated trauma was not only manifested in the naïve idea of restoring the virtue and honor of a “fallen” woman (an archetypal surrogate for his own idealized, unwed, biological mother) through transcendence, but also in confronting the innate cruelty of the very institutions that socially (and inequitably) stigmatized such human transgressions through codified notions of morality and class division. Read More »
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Two brothers in their seventies, Pa and Moe, have lived together all their lives in a little house in the country, the only interruption being when Pa made a weekend trip to Småland on his moped during the second World War. The past returns when his adult son dating from his Swedish visit, Konrad, comes to live with them after his mother has fallen ill. Soon Moe is about to discover that three is indeed a crowd…Read More »
Synopsis:
The story revolves around Hassan, who is studying Arabic calligraphy from a grand master. Coming across a fragment of manuscript, Hassan goes in search of the missing pieces, believing that once he finds them, he will learn the secrets of love. With the help of Zin, a lovers’ go-between, he meets the beautiful Aziz, Princess of Samarkand. After encountering wars, a battle between false prophets and an ancient curse, he learns that an entire lifetime would not suffice for him to learn the many dimensions of love.Read More »
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Once upon a Time (a.k.a. Der var engang) is an atypical film for the Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer, a departure from his more usual realistic dramas into the realm of fantasy and fairytale. It was the only film that Dreyer made for the independent film producer Sophus Madsen, a Danish film enthusiast whose only other production was Laurids Skands’s all but forgotten Livets Karneval (1923). The film was adapted from a play by Holger Drachmann, written in 1885, that was itself based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale Svinedrengen and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the
Shrew. From the outset, this was conceived as a lavish production, but it soon ran into financial difficulties. Even though some scenes were cut – including an extravagant market sequence – the film still ended up with a 150 per cent overspend on its 90,000
kroner budget.Read More »
Synopsis:
The drawbacks and difficulties of military life are explored in this film. Paolo Passeri (Michele Placido) is a college graduate, somewhat spoiled, somewhat effete, who finds himself in an officer training program under the stern martinet, Captain Asciutto (Franco Nero). He gradually becomes acclimated to the military mind-set, and when the Captain’s wife (Miou-Miou) decides to take a romantic interest in him, he does not report her dangerous peculiarities to anyone.Read More »
Synopsis:
A teacher is assigned to a remote desert village that is obsessed with a mysterious buried treasure and whose children are cursed to wander the desert.Read More »
The non-fiction author Walter falls for the physics student Agnes. He is fascinated by her extreme attitude towards life and her reserved appearance, which is quite the opposite of his quiet and regular life. When Agnes encourages him to follow his passion for writing fiction, he starts to work on a book, a portrait of how he sees her.Read More »
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Argentine director Carlos Jaureguialzo offers a fine take on the challenge with Matrimonio (Marriage), which will have its world premiere at the Miami International Film Festival this Sunday. By focusing on a day in the life of one weary couple he and screenwriter Marcela Silva y Nasute reveal a sometimes grim, often humorous, and ultimately affirming observation of aged love.
Esteban (Darío Grandinetti) and Molly (Cecilia Roth) have been married for over 20 years, and they clearly seem worn out. The film opens with a montage covering the detritus of this couple’s Buenos Aires apartment and, by extension, their life together. Everything is shown in super close-up: details of photos in picture frames, the water-stains on the edges of drying glasses in the kitchen, the top of a perfume bottle and the face of Esteban, staring up at the ceiling, waiting to get up in the morning to face the day.Read More »