Je Tu Il Elle (1974)

One haunting image from the film, Je Tu Il Elle (1974; I You He She), is when Julie, the young woman played by the director, Chantal Akerman, has shifted furniture out of her ground floor apartment, and has moved her bed against the wall. Sitting against an alcove in the corner of the room, near […]

Nenette And Boni (1996)

Tactile, melancholic, sensuous, elliptical. It’s hard to describe the effect that Nenette And Boni (1996) had on me. Directed by Claire Denis, and co-written by Denis and her collaborator Jean-Pol Fargeau, the story is about a brother and sister living in Marseilles. The experience of the movie is that it gives you pieces of the […]

Let The Corpses Tan (2017)

A leather glove tightened. Sweat dripping down a lined face. The snap of a firearm being loaded. The glow emanating from a gold bar. Let The Corpses Tan (2017; Laissez bronzer les cadavres) luxuriates in these details, fetishing them in close up and heightened sound design. As filmmakers, Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani have a […]

Demonlover (2002)

demonlover (2002) is like later period William Gibson: it’s not about putting on the goggles and jacking into the cyberspace, but more about corporate espionage. I love French director Olivier Assayas in this mode – post-Irma Vep genre studies of women at work and under duress (see also: Boarding Gate and Personal Shopper) in a […]

Alphaville (1965)

My enduring memory of Alphaville (1965) was the shot near the end of a Parisian freeway at night, the collection of lights in the darkness, a simple and low budget way of implying a future space. To travel to another galaxy as mundane as driving down a highway, yet still otherworldly in the grainy black […]