The German concept of liebestod (explored by such varied artists as composer Richard Wagner and author Thomas Mann) proposes the idea that true love cannot be attained without the complete abandonment of the will and submission to suppressed passion (hence, the literal translation of love and death). From the novel by Josephine Hart, Louis Malle’s […]
Au Revoir les enfants is a touching and nostalgic film about the loss of innocence. Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) is an awkward, fanciful adolescent who is sent by his doting mother to a provincial Catholic boarding school. Set in 1940s war-torn France, there is an underlying sense of hardship and uncertainty in this idyllic countryside: […]
Alain (Maurice Ronet) silently observes his lover Lydia (Léna Skerla), struggling to decipher the elusive meaning beneath the wistful, attentive eyes, lingering beyond the point of reassuring tenderness to where the potentiality of the moment of connection has irretrievably slipped away, and all that is left is the inscrutable, opaque gaze. Confronting the awkward silence, […]