Documenteur (1981)

Documenteur (1981) was filmed by French director Agnes Varda in Los Angeles while she was separated from husband Jacques Demy and it is subtitled “An Emotion Picture”. Like some of Varda’s other work, it mixes together fiction and reality, employing a documentary approach towards constructed elements that are no doubt reflecting what she was going […]

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 […]