Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

Guests in suits and evening dresses. A palace repurposed as a hotel. Refinement that feels like another time, another place. The camera tracks through the hallways, taking in the space, the high ceilings, the ornate interior decoration. In the hotel, people often stand still, pausing as if waiting for direction. Like actors in the small […]

Pacifiction (2022)

The white suit. When commissioner De Roller (Benoît Magimel), an official of France working in Tahiti, rides on a boat towards a surfing competition as part of his duties, he waves to a couple of people on the shore. It struck me how the white suit De Roller constantly wears in Pacifiction (2022), which seems […]

Bastards (2013)

Cascading rain in close-up against a building at night as moody synth from the Tindersticks plays over the soundtrack. The opening shot to Claire Denis’ film, Bastards (2013), hooked me in and visually established its neo-noir vibe. One of my favourite shots later in the film was of a woman, Chiara Mastroianni – seen from […]

Merry-Go-Round (1981)

“… generally considered a failure – but what a failure it is!” A quote from the Mubi “our take” description accompanying Jacques Rivette’s Merry-Go-Round (1981), and if you do any cursory reading around the film’s making you can understand why even the director himself considered it a “failure”. The third of four planned movies he […]

Anaïs In Love (2021)

Anaïs In Love (2021) played at festivals, if I remember correctly like the French Film Festival, and feels like it would have been overshadowed by The Worst Person In The World coming out in the same year. There’s a resemblance between the two leads – lithe brunette white women – and they’re both chaotic presences […]