പേജുകള്‍‌

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Buenas noches, España (2011)

Buenas noches, España (2011)
Director: Raya Martin
Country: Spain | Philippines
Runtime: 81min

In another lifetime, a Spanish couple takes drugs and teleports through their television set. A troubled young man travels through the countryside and meets a lost woman. During the trip, they discover a museum housing the expatriated paintings of the most important Filipino artist of the revolution. Eventually, the Spanish couple disappears toward their colony. Inspired by one of the earliest teleportation accounts, which happened between the Philippines and Mexico during the colonial period.

 Martin replicates the experience of being under the influence of drugs. He also replicates the feeling of being lost in time, seeing scenes played a few moments ago played again and again with various details changed, and listening to sounds that evoke reminiscence of carefree childhood. Being in the influence of drugs and time travel, although at first glance are two very different experiences, are actually interchangeable, giving Martin's proposition logical sense, and very personal sense, too, since drug influence and time travel are both panacea to heartache, allowing a person an option to forget and to make what has been made permanent by the movement of time more or less malleable. Thus, the lovers seem to be in incomparable bliss being in that state of temporal randomness, oblivious of where they are and where they are going.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

The Best Offer (2013)

The Best Offer (2013)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Country: Italy
Runtime: 124 min 


A story about an art expert who has some issues (he doesn't seem to like people much, he doesn't have a cell phone, he always wears gloves not to touch other people) and on top of that he uses his job as auctionner, and an accomplish, to get hold of precious paintings and other masterpiece he claims to be not really worth when instead they're expensives. The peculiar thing is, he seems to be really fond of women's portraits and he has a whole security chamber filled with this kind of paintings all over the walls.
One days he's been called by Claire Ibeson, daughter of a rich couple died in a car accident: she wants to sell all the stuff in the house she's been living in for her entire life, literally since she suffers agoraphobia and never leaves her secret room hidden behind a wall.
 

Friday, June 07, 2013

Inch'Allah (2012)

Inch'Allah (2012)
Director: Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette
Country: Canada | France
Runtime: 102 min

Chloe is a young Canadian doctor who divides her time between Ramallah, where she works with the Red Crescent, and Jerusalem, where she lives next door to her friend Ava, a young Israeli soldier. Increasingly sensitive to the conflict, Chloe goes daily through the checkpoint between the two cities to get to the refugee camp where she monitors the pregnancies of young women.

As she becomes friends with Rand, one of her patients, Chloe learns more about life in the occupied territories and gets to spend some time with Rand's family. Torn between the two sides of the conflict, Chloe tries as best she can to build bridges between her friends but suffers from remaining a perpetual foreigner to both sides.

Following up her acclaimed debut-feature Le ring, filmmaker Anais Barbeau-Lavalette delivers with Inch'Allah the moving tale a young woman's encounter with war and its everyday life. Avoiding any political agenda, Chloe's story questions how one can internalize a foreign conflict without ...

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Renoir (2012)

Renoir (2012)
Director: Gilles Bourdos
Country: France
Runtime: 111 min









 Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir -- son of the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste -- returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. At his side is Andrée, a young woman who rejuvenates, enchants, and inspires both father and son.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Paradise: Faith (2012)

Paradise: Faith (2012)
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Country: Austria
Duration : 1h 48mn

 Put together a subversive filmmaker like Ulrich Seidl with the subject of religious fanaticism and you’re bound to get something provocative. But Paradise: Faith, the second part of the Austrian director’s trilogy about three women from the same family on different quests, is possibly more interesting to think about and discuss afterwards than to sit through. Depending how you look at it, there’s a pitch-black comedy buried in here or a redeeming shred of empathy at the tail end of two grueling hours. Either way, it’s strictly for the faithful.
The film follows Paradise: Love, which premiered in competition at Cannes and dealt with a middle-aged frau on the prowl for romantic fulfillment among the sex tourists of Kenya. Seen briefly in the earlier film, that character’s sister, Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter), is the key figure in Faith, while her daughter is the center of the forthcoming third part, Paradise: Hope, about a zaftig teen at fat camp. In each freestanding film a vacation forces the protagonist to confront herself and her longing for happiness.