Synopsis:
A movie director is approached by his old math teacher with a great movie idea: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. The director rejects the idea, but subsequent events in the life of a writer, a friend of the director’s, and a young prostitute he loves seem to prove the math teacher’s idea.Read More »
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The year is 1972. Master Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti is struck down by a stroke, rendering him, one would think, unable to continue making films—and this just two years after hitting a late-career high point with Death in Venice. But like many artists kept alive by their muse, Visconti heroically persevered, managing to complete two more films before finally succumbing to a heart attack in 1976. Adaptability being a key ingredient to any sort of artistic longevity, Visconti took his ailments not as hindrance, but as a challenge toward the realization of a new project. Taken by a story written by past collaborator Enrico Medioli and intrigued by the cinematic restrictions afforded such an intimate character study, Visconti—now very limited in his physical movements and activity—saw both personal and logistical promise in this tale of aging, nostalgia, and generational divide, which was entitled Conversation Piece after an illustrated novel of family portraits of the same name by Mario Praz.Read More »
Synopsis
Antonio, a young man with a modest job in a small town, lives a monotonous existence until he is transferred to Barcelona to work in an architecture company. From that moment on, a new life will open before his eyes. He befriends Lorenzo, one of his co-workers. Lorenzo has more experience than Antonio and shows him a new, more sophisticated life in which Antonio feels out of place. In addition, Antonio falls in love with Montse, Lorenzo’s sister.
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This absorbing and intimate portrait of an ordinary town doctor is characteristic of Michel Deville’s cinema: sombre, slow moving, filled with humanity, and unashamedly naturalistic.
Albert Dupontel is captivating as the film’s central character, Dr Sachs, conveying not just the sense of ennui of a man who is locked into a life he no longer appreciates, but also his yearning for some kind of release, for the fulfilment that has so far eluded him. It is an underplayed, introspective, spiritual kind of film, focused exclusively on Sachs’ daily routine and his matter-of-fact interactions with his patients. The repetitive nature of the consultations, the drab colour scheme and the dreary locations do weigh the film down by they emphasise the sense of aching emptiness that is apparently pushing Sachs towards self-destruction.Read More »
The young monarch of a kingdom situated in eastern Europe is sent to France because of his poor health status. There, he meets again with his mother who had been exiled from the kingdom.Read More »
The story of Rosaria, a woman from Apulia, who works in Milan and returns to her village each Saturday to see her illegitimate little boy, who is in a charitable institution
The film entered the 23rd Venice International Film Festival, in which it received a special mention In 2008 it was restored and shown as part of the retrospective “Questi fantasmi: Cinema italiano ritrovato” at the 65th Venice International Film Festival.Read More »
Poland, during the World War. Lotna is a magnificent specimen of Arabian horse, the
pride of her owner, too old to actually ride her but to whom she remains faithful
nevertheless. The Polish cavalry army is also proud of their land, and loyal to rules, and
custom. The German army is leading an overwhelming speed attack with tanks, an
almost unheard of weapon, and bringing a way of life to an end. It’s the last battle
between Lotna (speed horse) and Blitzkriega (speed war).Read More »
Liz and Merry Noel become friends as college roommates and their friendship endures over the years. Liz becomes a respected “serious” novelist. Merry Noel marries, has a daughter and writes, too: “trash” fiction which becomes enormously successful. Their story begins in college and jumps ahead some years at a time to show their relationship with each other and those in their orbits as they grow and mature.Read More »
After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress (Lee Hye-young) has returned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one day in Seoul, via various encounters—including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives in her converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like to make a comeback—we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the big secret that’s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of the spiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sang-soo in a particularly contemplative mood; it’s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace and a sick joke.Read More »