-
Journey to the West 2014
What was slow motion?
This film is Tsai Ming-Liang’s answer (I suspect) to those who would accuse him of navel-gazing. Contemplation lies in the fulfillment of ephemeral and ordinary actions and movements regardless of time (in shot length), and any acuity of feeling resulting therein is an addendum outside of the filmmakers’s control (or conditioning, as it is said by Tsai Ming-Liang and The Diamond Sutra) but inside the viewer’s experience. Thus CCC and Slow Cinema are useless terms and…
-
The Virgin of Pessac 1969
During their convention one gets the impression that the townsfolk are about to elect a new goddess of the universe, yet the chosen girl is the personification of modesty. All the pomposity of the ceremony is concentrated in the person of the town major, who is an obvious reincarnation of the Légion d'honneur chasers that Flaubert ridiculed.
La rosière de Pessac is a companion piece to Le Cochon. Both are neo-Lumières, elaborate non-fictions. Anti-cinema vérité that reveals ancestral facts.
-
The Long Goodbye 1973
Lit cigarettes as continuity marks. A dog will keep you company but a cat will open up new destinies. One of the great neo-noirs.
-
From Today Until Tomorrow 1997
The camera turns the opera into an intimate affair, wherein we witness a symphony of physical movements, entrances and exits from the frame, and most astonishingly: faces. Where does your hidden smile lie? It depends on how many frames it takes to show it.