-
Anton Chekhov’s The Duel
ANTON CHEKHOV’S THE DUEL captures much of the strange poetry of diffidence and indirection that makes Chekhov a great dramatist and his comic dramas so difficult to perform. Indeed, one of the film’s achievements is to reveal the extent to which the author’s prose fiction, upon which it is based, possesses so many of the…
-
Ondine
The trailer for ONDINE does not even try to capture the delicacy of Neil Jordan‘s new film, which is more lyrical and poetic than suspenseful and melodramatic. Myths and fairy tales are not so much accounts of fancifully impossible events as patterns of experience that provide insight into the quotidian by seeming to defy the…
-
Love Ranch
At its best, LOVE RANCH feels like some forgotten classic of ’70s Americana, an abandoned stepchild of Peter Bogdonavich or Bob Rafelson, with a dash of Roger Corman thrown in. There is a kind of nostalgic pleasure to be had in the affection it evinces for the kitsch and vulgarity that was at one time…
-
Festival de otoño en primavera
I saw three shows at Madrid’s eccentrically named FESTIVAL DE OTOÑO EN PRIMAVERA (Fall Festival in Springtime), which brought a plethora of international theater to the Spanish capital in May and June. My listening comprehension of Spanish is what it is, so I would not pretend to have followed every thread of the multiple plots…
-
Room in Rome
Exactly why I found ROOM IN ROME to be so beautiful is not easy to explain, but it goes well beyond the prurient interest, which, once one is watching the film itself (when the actresses are draped by many more towels and bathrobes than implied by the publicity), gives way to the enchantment of the…
-
The City of Your Final Destination
THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION is the first Merchant Ivory film to be released without the involvement of the late Ismail Merchant. Cinephiles have not always favored the determinedly literary and so, the argument goes, un-cinematic Merchant-Ivory franchise (James Ivory being its other half), but I have usually found the bookish pace engrossing and…
-
Creditors • Uncle Vanya
It comes as no surprise that Alan Rickman, a mordantly arresting screen actor, would have an affinity for Strindberg, and he has directed CREDITORS with terrifying deftness. Less performed than Miss Julie, The Stronger or Dance of Death, less studied than The Father, CREDITORS, like some overlooked stepchild, has always begged the recognition that it…
-
Chloe
I have not always liked Atom Egoyan, but, as he did in The Sweet Hereafter, he drew me in and held me with his new, and very substantial, thriller. Although CHLOE is a genre film, it is remarkably unpredictable, making conventions we know from Hitchcock and De Palma seem fresh and distinctive. Toronto in winter…
-
An Education
Of the much admired British film AN EDUCATION I am become one of the admirers. Carey Mulligan is a charismatic new talent (winsome, witty, smart), and the movie, directed by Lone Scherfig with a script by Nick Hornby, really has something to say about education and of what it ought to consist. In tandem with her formal…
-
The White Ribbon
Michael Haneke‘s THE WHITE RIBBON is beautifully shot in black-and-white, ambiguous, enigmatic, sometimes a little awkward and even a bit stiff. Although the familiar Haneke mix of Hitchcockian suspense and Highsmithian amorality permeates every frame, the feel is of an historical fable. But, while gripping in the moment, it is strangely less memorable afterwards than…