Personal Affairs offers a gendered and decidedly feminist consideration of the way people can sometimes forget or refuse to treat their loved ones with the respect they deserve.
Cannes Film Festival
Cafe Society mocks and embraces backwards gender politics
Like the queasily dated Whatever Works — a film Allen wrote in the 1970s — Cafe Society insists on archaic gender politics.
Rams: Sheep farming is deadly serious business
Grimur Hakonarson’s Rams is part dark comedy, part family drama about two elderly brothers who haven’t spoken in years. The gorgeous Icelandic landscape provides the backdrop to this story about sheep farming and family reconciliation.
TIFF15 Review: Philippe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women
In a radical departure (just kidding) from his usual subject matter, writer-director Philippe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women tackles marital infidelity. Pierre (Stanislaus Merhar) and Manon (Clothilde, Princess of Venice and Piedmont) are a reasonably happy married couple who produce documentary films together when Pierre’s eye starts to wander to the young archivist Elizabeth […]
TIFF15 Review: The Assassin is gorgeous but tiresome
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin (Best Director Winner, Cannes 2015) was certainly the most beautiful film to screen at Cannes this year, though that’s not the same as saying it was the best shot. The production design is impeccable, and the colours and compositions are gorgeous, but to what end? The film is about waiting for the […]
Cannes Director’s Fortnight reviews
Arabian Nights, L’Ombre des Femmes, and Trois Souvenirs de Ma Jeunesse The Director’s Fortnight and its relationship to the Cannes Film Festival can be a perplexing one. It’s generally considered to be part of the festival — often a stepping stone to admission into the Official Selection — although it’s technically a separate, simultaneous film […]