Briefly covered in this Berlin report, excerpted below.
...The film opens with a stocky writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) going with his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) to a vacation cabin on the Baltic coast, though he is so absorbed in finishing his next book that he pays scant attention to the apocalyptic forest fires threatening the area. In much of his work, Petzold tends to sacrifice psychological interest for allegorical heft—a trade-off that works well enough in Dreileben: Beats Being Dead…
Briefly covered in this Berlin report, excerpted below:
ALLENSWORTH is not, in any case, likely to win Benning many new converts. Perhaps the only film less likely to do that at this festival is Hong Sang-soo’s mul-an-e-seo (in water), which succeeded in alienating even some longtime admirers. By now, anyone with even a passing interest in Hong will know that the film comprises shots that are, for the most part, not in focus. This basic violation of cinematography standards is…
For a film that’s predicated on gradual seduction and about looking/painting as a conduit for or expression of love, this opts for some rather unproductive presentations of time. The sense of daily ritual is poorly evoked: scenes are given just enough narrative information so we get a sense of the plot, but there’s no feel for duration, or a sense of deepening interplay between the characters beyond what is required to signal such developments. The fireside scene should be a…
