Very approachable absurdist comedy that takes jabs at the angularity, sameness, and disconnection of modern city life. We follow director Tati’s Hulot character along with a group of American tourists through the new Paris, full of glass, steel, and new technologies. Amazingly it was all purpose-built for the movie–and destroyed soon after. There’s not so much a plot as there is an arc through a series of vignettes, like we see in Roy Andersson’s surrealist comedies. I’d love to see a 70mm projection of it, as there is so much detail in many shots that get lost on a small screen.
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The Celebration 1998
Three grown children gather to celebrate their father’s 60 birthday at the family hotel, along with other family members. Explosively, family secrets are revealed. Allegiances form.
Combining the darkest of cringe comedy with the darkest of family drama, this first Dogme 95 film is unrelentless. And it all takes place over the course of an evening.
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Strange Darling 2023
It's hard not to be pulled into this from the start by the tension of two strangers about to engage in some kink. It's a simple plot but it unfolds non-linearly, as we rewind and fast-forward to chapters of events over the course of just one night and a day.
Director of photography Giovanni Ribisi paints the screen with Lynchian and Cronenberg-esque palettes. As for the gender themes, they're complicated--not in a nuanced sort of way, more in an "old movie that might have had good intentions but it's hard to tell" sort of way. But as a thriller it's solid.
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Vortex 2021
Horror/giallo director Dario Argento plays an aging writer whose wife (Françoise Lebrun) starts battling dementia. The entire film is in split screen, each side following one of the characters, sometimes in shared spaces as they interact and sometimes in different rooms or even buildings. Despite the filmic device and improvised dialogue, it's Gaspar Noé's most conventional film, dealing with aging, family, history of place, and loss in a frank way that's uncommon in his work, which tends toward the confrontational and the ecastaic.
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