Malmoe, Sweden during the Second World War. Stig is a 15 year old pupil on the verge of adulthood. Viola is 37 years old and his teacher. He is attracted by her beauty and maturity. She is drawn to him by his youth and innocence, a god-sent relief from her drunk and miserable husband. They start a passionate and forbidden relationship – but it has consequences they never could have expected. Written by Mattias PetterssonRead More »
synopsis
Jan Dara grows up in a house lacking in love but abundant in lust. He quickly picks up the sinful way of life of the man who married his mother after she became pregnant from being raped. His ‘father’s’ mistress welcomes the young boy into her literal bosom. Wanting badly to know his real father, Jan leaves the house, only coming back after Khun Luang’s daughter falls pregnant out of wedlock. Jan does a favor to his ‘father’ by marrying her, even though he is deeply in love with the mistress. The truth about his birth, as Jan will later learn, is as confusing and messed up as his present life and the lives of those around him.Read More »
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Set on the mean streets of Hong Kong in the late eighties, “As Tears Go By” is the tale of two lowly gangsters, Ah Wah and his side-kick Fly trapped in a endless downward spiral of violence and vengeance. Overview: A low-level triad “big brother” (Andy Lau) has a hot-tempered “little brother” (Jacky Cheung) who can’t keep out of trouble, and consequently is in constant need of being bailed out by his protector. Andy is super cool, but lacks the ambition to rise in the ranks of the triad societies, and once he meets his cousin (Maggie Cheung), and falls in love with her, he decides he wants to leave “the life”. But it turns out that he has to bail out Jacky one more time. And this time, Jacky may have gone too far.Read More »
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Isao Takahata‘s Hotaru no Haka (The Grave of the Fireflies, 1988) is a brilliant piece of cinema. Set in Kobe, Japan, in 1945, the film focuses on a brother and sister who are left orphaned and homeless by the American firebombing of the city. It is unflinching in its portrayal of the realities of the war, a harrowing account of what such attacks meant for the ordinary people living in the target area. The children’s innocence and love for each other is no defence against the trials they face: their suffering is very real, their story a classic tragedy. That The Grave of the Fireflies is animated rather than live-action does not distract from its power to move, to provoke thought, to draw tears from the eyes. It is a masterpiece.Read More »
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Based on the classic novel by Murasaki Shikibu, written over 1000 years ago. Genji, the son of the emperor, has gained renown among the nobility of Kyoto for his charm and good looks, yet he cannot stop himself from pursuing the one object of desire he must never obtain: his father’s young and beautiful bride. Following the tragic consequences of his obsession, Genji wanders from one affair to another, always seeking some sort of completion to his life.Read More »
Trainee designer Kasumi has married her employer in Tokyo, the manager of a design workshop, and has had a two-year affair with one of his clients. She and her unsuspecting husband are vacationing in Hokkaido with her ex-lover and his wife when their five-year old daughter Yuka disappears without a trace. Distraught, Kasumi clings to the idea that Yuka is somewhere alive and safe. She returns to the spot every year, hoping to find a clue. Meanwhile her marriage nearly collapses, and her ex-lover’s marriage does collapse. On her fifth visit to Hokkaido, she is shadowed by Utsumi, a detective who has his own ominous reasons for wanting to be involved…Read More »
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The film’s narrative follows three leading actresses, all appearing in the same movie (but not appearing in the same shot until the end of the film), and all undergoing their own personal crises. It’s very formally worked out, through a series of carefully balanced dialogues with confessors, synchronized confrontation scenes, and staggered flashbacks. If Farewell was Yoshida’s self-conscious Resnais tribute, this is him in Bergman mode (Mariko Okada’s story even begins with her experience hysterical mutism, à la Persona), though the finished product is much livelier and more pungent than anything Bergman would have come up with (maybe Zetterling’s The Girls is a more apposite reference point). On another level, it’s also referencing a big old Hollywood melodrama, pastel panoramas in various shades of bitch (there are also nods to All About Eve).Read More »
Storyline
A young, orthodox Jewish woman is alienated from her Jerusalem community and drawn into the world of spirit. Surrounded by dark sounds of the “Other Side,” she moves into remote and increasingly desolate regions of Arab lands. Her journey, like a mystical quest through her own inner landscapes, culminates in her return to Jerusalem. There, indelibly marked, she confronts her deeper loneliness and a devastating sense of exile.Read More »
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After claiming to be visited by his dead father’s ghost, a young man with sleepwalking problems (Hugo Arana) enters into a sexual relationship with the neighborhood hottie (Anotella Costa), a spiritual-mystical type who’s all too willing to be his guide through the Kama Sutra, as well as to teach him how to hold in his wad past 81 thrusts. Eventually, Arana discovers he can materialize in far-off lands when he bones — as though sex were the spice from Dune. (Sample post-coital line: “Venice is incredible!”) This, mind you, is basically played for giggles, with writer-director Eliseo Subiela maintaining a gentle dreamy-absurdist tone that feels like Buñuel minus the anticlericalism (if that makes any sense). Cheerfully inscrutable, with a deftly sustained, calmly deranged performance from Costa, it unfortunately can’t figure out an ending and so just stops. There’s a sexual metaphor for that condition, right?Read More »