A lesson in love. Ingmar Bergman. 1954.
Sexist Bergman sex comedy in which the cool gynaecologist wins back his wife from the buffalo sculptor with his wit and charm, and ability to outwit his passionate and gorgeous wife- all on a train ride to Copenhagen with flashbacks of parties and conversations with the kids.
Mommy. Xavier Dolan. 2014.
The square frame opens out to the world only when the world opens out to the characters.
Arabian Nights- Volume 1: The Restless One. Miguel Gomes. 2015.
To stave off the execution, to buy more time, mad, angry, funny stories of Portugal’s austerity drive forced on it by the international lending agencies, including a story that conflates the testimonies of dock workers with firemen burning wasp’s nests, another where european lenders compensate for their erectile dysfunction by screwing the Portuguese people, or where a cock is put on trial for waking up a neighbourhood but was only trying to warn the people of the love triangle that is keeping the mountain burning. A Chinese emperor and a German schoolboy also in there somewhere, before an exploding whale on a beach and a series of testimonies from people who are planning a swim in the ocean on the first of January.
Reprise. Joachim Trier. 2006.
Love, ambition, jealousy and friendship between two friends and novelists in a group of friends that is growing past revolutionary punk poses into convention and maturity. All in hazy Scandinavian half light, in woozy backward forwards in real and fictional ‘what if’ and 'maybe’ narratives.
Udta Punjab. Abhishek Chaubey. 2016. In spite of the hype, not dark enough, not funny enough, not moving enough and definitely not radical at all; in spite of it’s pretensions.
Bamako. Abderrahmane Sissako. 2006.
A wish fulfilment trial between the african people and the World Bank, the IMF and other international funding agencies in the home of a singer and the court of a cloth dyeing yard that turns into a makeshift courtroom in Bamako. Africa itself spills into the neat edges of the frame messing it up, making it untidy- women and children walk into the proceedings oblivious of the serious speechifying from both sides, paying half-attention and participating suddenly in rushes of outrage and anger, or in sudden song- wailing laments that made me cry. Angry, ironical, tragic and with a black black humour when the World Bank walks as villain in a film-inside-a-film western and Danny Glower as hero.
The Club. Pablo Larrain. 2015.
In the claustrophobia of a house by the sea four priests and a nun spend days in repentance for their sins. One of their victims turns up as an angel of truth and there is death. The church sends an investigator to find out more and/or cover up the meaning of the incident.
