An authoritarian voice teaches young adults that the word sea designate an object on which you can sit. In that introduction all has been said about a story speaking of different moral rules inside a family isolated. The other strange rules are weirder and wisely directed by Lanthimos which third feature is his best and can tear comparisons with Michael Haneke, Amat Escalante, Alexei Balabanov, Gela Babluani and other young filmmakers in the way they put a cold reflection on the world and its problems. One can not stop thinking of the Natasha Kampush case. But the real transcending thing of this movie and its bonus is the metatextual reference to cinema as a 'literaly' and metaphorical weapon against rules and reiteration of theses and even dialogs. This movie is clearly a masterwork and believe me when I say it will be a cult movie.
Reviews
7 Reviews
Sweetheart
(1992)
One of the best poetic thriller cop movie ever
8 December 2006
Warning: Spoilers
A village in the Alps, some thieves murdered a couple of old people. The young inspector Vade must inquire but he collaborates, by annoys or ambition, in the revenge of the son of the couple, the mysterious businessman, Gardella, who eliminates the murderers. Taking the chance, an agent of Interpol, Thurston, which watched Gardella for a long time, transfers Vade to Zurich and handles it so that the young cop informs him on the activities of the businessman and tends a trap to him. Seduced by Gardella and his very beautiful wife, Jeanne, Vade must choose his camp and avoid being manipulated.
On a well tied up story of an American polar (Sweat hearts by Coburn), Deville stylizes (as he had already done for Dossier 51) a mise en scene and dialogs with double meanings, playing with words in French and an actor direction shifted near to the theater but less exaggerated than a Kusturica. This stylization on the thriller genre is an experiment which transforms a dark police movie into a story full of poetry in the dialogs and the images. I recommend it for everyone, in particular amateurs of the police genre and the lovers of French. Note the great building of the characters; all have something to tell, and the beauty of Mathilda May.
On a well tied up story of an American polar (Sweat hearts by Coburn), Deville stylizes (as he had already done for Dossier 51) a mise en scene and dialogs with double meanings, playing with words in French and an actor direction shifted near to the theater but less exaggerated than a Kusturica. This stylization on the thriller genre is an experiment which transforms a dark police movie into a story full of poetry in the dialogs and the images. I recommend it for everyone, in particular amateurs of the police genre and the lovers of French. Note the great building of the characters; all have something to tell, and the beauty of Mathilda May.
Posledniy uik-end
(2005)
A journey into hellish friendship
17 August 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Synopsis : Kirill, a Russian teenager who loves rap music with his best friend, falls in love with a beautiful young dancer, Katia. He also meets 2 new strange friends in a fight. He becomes deep in love with Katia. So he invited them in his apartment for the week-end. But while helping Kirill trying to impress Katia, Kirill's best friend dies in an accident. The four left friends start a nightmarish journey with death.
Comment: Technically I love this movie because it's not pretentious (refering to Brat): Here u get what u want from a small first time director film. Plus the narrative and edition are great. They make you fell the nightmare going through. It's a game of flashbacks and flash-forwards. The subject made me remember UK Shallow grave (1994) but this film is less caricature and comic (but it still comic in certain way) and have more tension and drama. So it doesn't miss the point of a story about dead friends (like SG did). Note that each character or person in this film is well build and very well acted. I can't wait to see next movie of this director.
Comment: Technically I love this movie because it's not pretentious (refering to Brat): Here u get what u want from a small first time director film. Plus the narrative and edition are great. They make you fell the nightmare going through. It's a game of flashbacks and flash-forwards. The subject made me remember UK Shallow grave (1994) but this film is less caricature and comic (but it still comic in certain way) and have more tension and drama. So it doesn't miss the point of a story about dead friends (like SG did). Note that each character or person in this film is well build and very well acted. I can't wait to see next movie of this director.
Rogelio
(2000)
To all the world's dead
3 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Incipit: Rogelio didn't realize that he was dead, and escaped from the grave. Epilogue: I didn't heard anymore from him since my wife incinerated me.
In the tradition of the realismo magico, Arriaga shows death in a Mexican way, it is to say- very alive. With a rapid editing of clips-cliché, all the narration is supported by a voice over who is not the one of the protagonist who is already dead from the beginning. This gives a highly contemporary focus and rhythm on the macabre story. In the picture and in the story the world of the dead is contaminated by the one of the living (consume, sex) and vice-versa. But that can only happened in the traditional Mexican cult of dead, because if you are incinerated in the modern way you will not interact with the living. Arriaga says that the power of life is almost everywhere.
In the tradition of the realismo magico, Arriaga shows death in a Mexican way, it is to say- very alive. With a rapid editing of clips-cliché, all the narration is supported by a voice over who is not the one of the protagonist who is already dead from the beginning. This gives a highly contemporary focus and rhythm on the macabre story. In the picture and in the story the world of the dead is contaminated by the one of the living (consume, sex) and vice-versa. But that can only happened in the traditional Mexican cult of dead, because if you are incinerated in the modern way you will not interact with the living. Arriaga says that the power of life is almost everywhere.
You Owe Me One
(2002)
Religion=Sex
1 October 2004
After the screenplay of Y tu mama tambien (and your mother too), Carlos Cuarón pursues his critic of the new Mexican high class society, this time through out the filter of religion. The first 4 minutes of the film announce the tricky structure of this short. The protagonist of the short is not the father who open the film by his entry in the house, or the sequence of him getting his clothes out in front of the closet. The real protagonist is the one seeing the father getting undressed and the one ending the film by his scream. So is the house full of religious representations but not full of quite pious people. In anti religious way Cuarón tells us to not believe all we see.
Hollywood Flies
(2005)
wasteland again!!
31 March 2004
Italian Luca (Antonio Cupo) leaves Las Vegas for the Death Valley with his sister Martina (Bianca Guaccero). At the same time, Cherie (Caprice Bourret), striptease dancer and model, escapes from her rich boss, Zach (Casper Van Dien), to get back with her pimp boyfriend Mickey. On the highway, the two Italian give a passage to two hitchhikers, Sean and Emilio. They stop to rest in a motel (in which Cherie hides); but the next morning, Luca find out that Martina has been kidnapped by Jamie and Sean. Actually, the two hitchhikers are escaping from Las Vegas where they robbed a bank; they want Luca, alone, to catches up them to Los Angeles with the money in a rented car with a cell. Then, they will free Martina. But Cherie gets in the car when private Joe Gardner hired by Zach, find her. Fortunately, Luca will find both of them (Caprice, her lover, the private, Martina and the bank robbers) in LA motel where they are rooming. Now, everybody is after the money.
Filmed in part in Canada, this second movie from Segatori is pursuing the exploration of the desert (very present in Terra bruciata a western genre film), here in opposition to the structured city with false buildings and hot girls of L.A. As he did it many years ago with his short film about Cappadocia, Segatori continues his visitation of ruined landscapes but instead of philosophical comments, action for lost causes plots take place.
Filmed in part in Canada, this second movie from Segatori is pursuing the exploration of the desert (very present in Terra bruciata a western genre film), here in opposition to the structured city with false buildings and hot girls of L.A. As he did it many years ago with his short film about Cappadocia, Segatori continues his visitation of ruined landscapes but instead of philosophical comments, action for lost causes plots take place.
The Wasteland
(1999)
Wastedland !
31 March 2004
Francisco (Raul Bova), stuntman and double of a star (Tom Grasso) in hollywoodian movies of B series, come recalled to the fatherland, Italy, when he learns about the dead of his parents, victims of a fire caused from a short circuit. He arrives to a shiny-southern italian small-town (Sicily) for the funeral. After seeing his friends, he meets a young girl, Maria (Bianca Guaccero), who lives in his parent's ruins, and tells him that the parents have been victims of an attack warp from the two local mafia clans, Capeggiati from the violent Macrì (Giancarlo Giannini) and the Tonino, the so-called friends of Francisco, for the supremacy in the zone. With the aid of Maria and her friend a black valet, Francisco will revenge his parents and call blood-tragedy on his birth-town.
Fabio Segatori is very known in Italy for his awesome shorts movies : Wolves (2001) about cannibalism and Beasts(1996) about a killer persecution. His first film is a pursuing of the thinking of the body in our world : forgotten at the beginning (stuntman who loses his parents), hurted at the end (by the violence and the love). Segatori confronts the body to his environnement by the use of hegelian dialectic (the city and the desert) and he comes to a very terrifying conclusion : evil doesn't die at the end. It is in us. But you can't forget all the elements of a action movie code (jokes, love story, friendship, action, music) that Segatori uses well, but to philosophically. You feel it : it's an european action movie. Let's wait for the next movie filmed in U.S.A.
Fabio Segatori is very known in Italy for his awesome shorts movies : Wolves (2001) about cannibalism and Beasts(1996) about a killer persecution. His first film is a pursuing of the thinking of the body in our world : forgotten at the beginning (stuntman who loses his parents), hurted at the end (by the violence and the love). Segatori confronts the body to his environnement by the use of hegelian dialectic (the city and the desert) and he comes to a very terrifying conclusion : evil doesn't die at the end. It is in us. But you can't forget all the elements of a action movie code (jokes, love story, friendship, action, music) that Segatori uses well, but to philosophically. You feel it : it's an european action movie. Let's wait for the next movie filmed in U.S.A.
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