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PHANTOM LOVE is a surreal, highly visual drama about an enmeshed family, in which violence and trauma are steadily percolating, just beneath the surface.

The lead character is LULU (Marina Shoif): a very beautiful, but angry and isolated woman, who lives alone, and works in a casino in Korea-town, Los Angeles. Lulu’s lover is much younger than herself-the relationship is charged but emotionally disconnected. Lulu’s younger sister, NITZAN (Juliette Marquis), is in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, caused in part by prescription medication. Lulu feels emotionally invaded by her mother, who wants to come to town and stay in Lulu’s apartment in order to try and help the younger sister-but this feels like a further intense invasion, and Lulu refuses.

PHANTOM LOVE weaves these various elements together into a strange but archetypal story, revealing the interior processes by which Lulu manages to see, and therefore begin to release herself, from the violence which surrounds her.

Like all Nina Menkes’s work, PHANTOM LOVE positions an alienated woman against a harsh, inhospitable landscape-this time, within a family. Stylistically, the film combines fairy-tale elements and a dreamy, mystical quality with a gritty, hyper-real, and sometimes almost documentary style, shooting everything on location and often using non-actors (“real” people) in the non-major roles.

Structured like Chinese boxes, with each scene opening onto another, still deeper inside, PHANTOM LOVE is a powerful document about one woman’s descent into self.

+Commentary with Nina Menkes

2.02GB | 1h 26m | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/38F23733B234993/Phantom.Love.2007.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Nina Menkes – Phantom Love (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

As a mother and daughter struggle to cope with the terrors of the post-revolution, war-torn Tehran of the 1980s, a mysterious evil begins to haunt their home.
Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her family live amid the chaos of the Iran-Iraq war, a period known as The War of the Cities. Accused of subversion by the post-Revolution government and blacklisted from medical college, she falls into a state of malaise. With Tehran under the constant threat of aerial bombardment, her husband (Bobby Naderi) is drafted and sent to the frontlines by the army, leaving Shideh all alone to protect their young daughter, Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). Soon after he leaves, a missile hits their apartment building and while failing to explode, a neighbor dies under mysterious circumstances and Dorsa’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Shideh finds herself slowly drawn into the ensuing turmoil, struggling to cling onto what is real and what is not. Searching for answers, she learns from a superstitious neighbor that the cursed missile might have brought with it Djinn – malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits that travel on the wind.
Convinced that a supernatural force within the building is attempting to possess Dorsa, Shideh has no choice but to confront these forces if she is to save her.

3.28GB | 1 h 23 min | 1280×536 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9BB158195556DFE/under.the.shadow.2016.limited.720p.bluray.x264-usury.mkv

Language(s):Persian
Subtitles:English

The post Babak Anvari – Under the Shadow (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.