A quartet of deaf musicians rehearsing in a studio provides an appropriately lyrical and enchanting prelude to In the Land of the Deaf as they interpret an orchestral arrangement through a series of sweeping, rhythmic cadence: at times, in interacting and overlapping ‘instrumental’ solos, and at other points, in unison, as the articulated symphony intensifies […]
Under the Sun of Satan opens to an inherently solemn ritual as a senior priest, Canon Menou-Segrais (Mauric Pialat) shaves a spot on the top of the head of a pensive young priest named Father Donissan (Gérard Depardieu) who, in turn, uses the occasion to express his feelings of profound estrangement and inutility from the […]
Part autofiction in its reflexive tale of emotional abandonment and part social realism in its clinical illustration of the nation’s overtaxed foster care system, Maurice Pialat’s L’Enfance nue finds greater kinship with Jean Eustache’s studies on hybrid modes of representation than with a deconstructed cinéma du papa that François Truffaut’s involvement as the film’s co-producer […]
The sound of a rattling, mechanical alarm bell seemingly ushers a silent wave of anonymous, early morning commuters heading towards metropolitan Paris at the crack of dawn as they follow the ritualistic procession of informal queues leading to the subway station, pack into crowded, unconditioned trains, transfer through a coordinated maze of mass transportation, traverse […]
Set in a company-sponsored orienteering contest – a false peril, team-building competition that pits administrative departments against each other in navigating their way out of a vast, public recreational park in the least amount of time by locating a prescribed series of trail markers using only the provisions and equipment provided to them at the […]
It is nearly impossible to characterize Michele Placido’s sprawling, ambitious, and elliptical gangster film, Crime Novel without raising the specter of Francesco Rosi’s seminal cinema on the murky atmosphere of corruption, nebulous alliances, terrorism, and widespread violence that defined the sociopolitical landscape of 1970s Italy. However, while Rosi’s disorienting ellipticism served to illustrate the power […]