So Chris writes her screenplay inside a windmill, which for me cannot escape allusions to Quixote. Past lovers and nostalgic are perhaps her giants to tilt against (or Bergman himself)?
Both have themes of reality vs. fiction and of course layers of metafiction. Is this also in dialogue with Sunset Boulevard?
The windmill connection elevates this fill from 4 stars to 4.5.
In 1994 I was studying for my MA in English focusing on the works of Flannery O’Connor and James Joyce (referenced here during a priest’s bedside visit in the best cameo of this decade). In 1994 I also had my life changed by a film called Before Sunrise, starring Ethan Hawke who falls in love with a European while traveling abroad.
I’ve been waiting 30 years for someone to make this film, and Hawke was the right artist to do it.
Schrader may have led me to this film, but Bresson’s style and ideas immediately had me fixated. Perhaps a better foundation for framing a film class than even Citizen Kane (Sherlock Jr. became my first film of the semester during my last few years of teaching).
Can’t think of a single shot or sequence that failed to impress. The inspector running his finger through the dust on the main character’s book is the key scene for me.
