María Casares

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Jean Cocteau died on October 11, 1963, the same exact day that his longtime friend, the French chanteuse Edith Piaf, succumbed to liver cancer not all that far away. Some have even speculated that the news of Piaf’s death was what spurred the heart attack that claimed Cocteau, a beautiful, if melancholic coincidence, if we are to put our full faith into what’s ostensibly rumor, seeing as the famed poet, theater director, and filmmaker often remarked that he was more scared of the deaths of his loved ones than he was of his own inevitable demise.Read More »

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On April 27, 1937, in the midst of a grueling and increasingly brutal Spanish Civil War, the
ancient Basque town of Guernica was subjected to an extended duration bombardment
campaign by German forces in an unrelenting aerial campaign designed to demoralize the
collective psyche of the Basque nation and to also show camaraderie (and military
alliance) with the nationalists under Generalissimo Francisco Franco.Read More »

After a cult besieges her convent, a young nun goes with an army of Muslims to destroy the convent and kill who wronged her.

Letterboxd review
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★★★½ Rewatched by Ian West 06 Apr 2021

Nasty little italiano revenge jam—complete with my girl Florinda Bolkan, all the nunsploitation tropes you’d want, and a feminist message. Not as stylized as some other sub genre offerings… but nevertheless, Flavia the Heretic is up there with The Devils, Alucarda, The Transgressor, and Satanico Pandemonium as far as my favorite crazy nun movies go.Read More »

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“Les dames du Bois de Boulogne is a 1945 film directed by Robert Bresson. It is a modern adaptation of a section of Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste (1796), telling the story of a man who is tricked into marrying a former prostitute. The title means “the women of the Bois de Boulogne”, a park in Paris. Les Dames was Bresson’s second feature and is an early example of his dramatic experimentation and innovations in reducing dramatic form to its bare essentials, signifying his status as an auteur, rather than simply a metteur en scène. It is also his last film to feature a cast entirely composed of professional actors.The film’s editing rhythms are similar to Bresson’s later work. However, while his later work often reflects Bresson’s personal Catholic beliefs and Christian-intellectual mentality, Les Dames is a more secular work. The redemptive ending is more secular than spiritual although it does establish Bresson’s later, more refined, thematic obsessions with redemption and salvation.”Read More »