Quote:
With The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Davies selectively transforms a lesser-known Terence Rattigan play into a broody rumination on emotional freedom and frustrated desire. Davies abandons Rattigan’s linear narrative and compressed timeline in favor of a more free-form structure, one that underlines the ebb and flow of memory as it shuttles between past and present. At the same time, The Deep Blue Sea confirms Davies’s continued engagement with the period melodrama—in this case, the variety of “woman’s picture” exemplified by the doomed romanticism of David Lean’s Brief Encounter, a touchstone that The Deep Blue Sea on several occasions blatantly references. Set against the backdrop of post-WWII Britain, a dowdy period of rationing and reconstruction, The Deep Blue Sea hinges on the seemingly irresolvable predicament of its heroine, Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz). Trapped within the confines of a passionless marriage to older, well-to-do Sir William (Simon Russell Beale), Hester vainly seeks satisfaction in an ardent affair with young, impulsive Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). Absorbed in memories of his carefree pre-war days, Freddie ultimately cannot return Hester’s affection, and their relationship soon degenerates into noisy rows and mutual recriminations.

Signaling from the onset its emancipation from stage-bound prolixity, The Deep Blue Sea opens with a remarkable, nearly wordless sequence as Hester prepares to commit suicide by gassing herself, a fragmented montage punctuated by periodic fades to black, and set to Samuel Barber’s dolorous violin concerto. Losing consciousness, Hester’s mind casts back to earlier times: a fireside evening spent with William that brilliantly illuminates both the growing chasm between husband and wife, as well as the glow of almost paternalistic warmth that yet unites them; and other evenings at the pub with Freddie, the two of them chiming in on choruses of popular songs with the other patrons. Davies captures Hester and Freddie’s vertiginous, all-consuming sensuality with a bold overhead shot of the pair making love, the camera dizzily swirling through several 360-degree pivots.

A testament to Davies’s pictorial prowess, The Deep Blue Sea opens and closes with two elaborate tracking shots. The camera moves along an anonymous suburban London street, passing across the façade of a particular domicile as though at random, winding up at the window of Hester’s flat. (The final shot reverses the direction.) During a flashback to the war, another bravura shot (fully two minutes long) tracks along a subway platform. Evacuated underground by the Blitz, a cross-section of London citizenry listens, and slowly joins in, as a lone voice wails the mournful Irish ballad “Molly Malone.” Only at the end of the shot do we see Hester and William huddled together. Taken together, these moments reinforce the notion that the story we’re privy to at the moment is only one among countless untold others.

The Deep Blue Sea is amply and aptly generous to its three main characters, refusing easy conventions that would render William as entirely cold, aloof, and unlikeable; nor does it stint on showing Freddie’s callous brutality toward Hester, even as it suggests a number of plausible reasons for his behavior. Ultimately, this isn’t an either/or film. Caught, as its title indicates, “between the devil and the deep blue sea,” Hester can only grow into a fully realized human being by letting go, releasing the hold that both men have on her. Davies again manages to convey this through the simplest of visual means: matched shots of Hester drawing closed the curtains of her dingy room on the night that sees her attempt her own death, and then, at film’s end, throwing the curtains open on the uncertain light of a new day.

The.Deep.Blue.Sea.2011.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 38 min
Size: 	3.14 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x552 
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 046 kb/s
BPP: 	0.298
Audio
#1:  	English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 72.0 kb/s (Commentary by Director Terence Davies and Journalist Ian Haydn Smith)

https://nitro.download/view/BC47F21F2E76AAB/The.Deep.Blue.Sea.2011.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Terence Davies – The Deep Blue Sea (2011) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Deep fractures within a family dynamic begin to surface during a getaway to the Isles of Scilly.

…As much as a downbeat comedy of bourgeois mores, Archipelago is a sort of claustrophobic horror story, set in a place of no easy escape. This is Hogg’s Shutter Island, if you like, although the madness is more discreet, in the English style…

1.62GB | 1h 50mn | 1001×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/AF6D337FAB8B62B/Archipelago_(Joanna_Hogg,_2010).mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Joanna Hogg – Archipelago (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis(bfi)
Joanna Hogg (Unrelated, Archipelago) brings her distinctly minimalist brand of comedy into the ultra-modernist home of artists D and H. This troubled but brave-faced couple have decided to sell their much-loved apartment, but as the sale begins to inch ever closer to reality, submerged anxieties, resentments and second-thoughts spring to the surface.
Starring Viv Albertine, guitarist of influential punk group The Slits, and Turner-prize-nominated artist Liam Gillick, Exhibition is as sleekly designed and uncompromisingly arch as the house itself – the film’s commanding central character. It’s also a deftly observed comment on the uncontrollable property obsession that characterises modern Britain.

https://nitro.download/view/4445D7FB9747DED/Exhibition_SD.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Joanna Hogg – Exhibition (2013) first appeared on Cinema of the World.