Ma Mère, 2004

A somber and young man Pierre (Louis Garrel) sits inside a car listening impassively as his barely coherent, self-absorbed father (Philippe Duclos) coldly reveals his resigned resentment towards him as an accident of birth who had caused a premature end to his bohemian lifestyle and sexual experimentation with his wife Hélène (Isabelle Huppert). Brought to […]

Night and Day, 2008

In a way, Night and Day continues the narrative bifurcation of Hong San-soo’s earlier work while converging towards Luis Buñuel’s late period films in conflating reality with sublimated desire. A married, middle-aged painter, Sun-nam (Kim Youngho), having impulsively run off to Paris in order to avoid a confrontation with police following a pot smoking incident, […]

Woman on the Beach, 2006

After observing Hong Sang-soo’s previous three films bucolically retreating within a predictable safety zone of recurring preoccupations and reflexive encounters illustrated through linear narratives in somewhat uncharacteristic fashion following what had been his most structurally experimental film to date, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, it is refreshing to see Hong crystallize his now familiar […]

Dance in the Rain, 1961

Considered to be among the best Slovenian films ever made (that, according to author and Slovenian film and culture scholar Joseph Valencic, often ranks first in national film polls), maverick filmmaker Bostjan Hladnik’s dense and atmospheric Dance in the Rain finds greater kinship with the experimental narrative, fragmentation, and interiorization of Erik Lochen’s The Hunt […]