🎬 #111 Realism In Love And Horror.
This week we have two films that deal with opposite but related ‘emotions’ - horror and love. Powerful repulsion and powerful attraction. Even in the depths of the horror film there is a lot of love to be found - otherworldly dedication and moments of religious fervour that border on the orgasmic.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: LES OLYMPIADES, PARIS 13E
ENGLISH TITLE: PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT
2021 Dir Jacques Audiard
[1hr 45 mins]
Jacques Audiard might be one of the most effortless filmmakers out there. His command of storytelling, getting you deeply involved in the characters without seemingly doing anything - blows me away every time. He puts a ton of work into his films but they appear as light as a feather - like it’s easy to do this. When it’s so so difficult to even land the simplest feeling in cinema.
I love all his work that I’ve seen and his latest is no different. Maybe lighter and more jovial than the films he’s most famous for - but still, he packs a ton of emotion into it. Essentially, it’s the story of four people who overlap in a specific district of Paris as they go about their lives and find love on the way. Audiard takes a very observational approach to the story - as if we’re wandering between these people. Long pans and zooms find them in this dense area of Paris. Suggesting that there are millions of these encounters and relationships taking place. That he could point the camera anywhere and find the intricacies and complications of love - everywhere.
The raw black and white and the handheld camera work makes everything feel real and intimate. The lack of colour only amplifies the emotions conjured up by the main characters. It’s a film that shows us our vulnerable sides. That takes away the posturing - it surprises us, makes us laugh - it’s awkward, embarrassing. It’s love.
TL;DR As close as Audiard’s gotten to a romantic comedy - this is top tier and effortlessly enjoyable.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US and the UK.
Fact: Filmed during the Covid 19 Pandemic - director Jacques Audiard said there are two things really challenging in filmmaking: violence and sex, because they're completely unreal onscreen…you have to make it completely real and believable.
FILM TWO: SAINT MAUD
2019 Dir Rose Glass
[1hr 24 mins]
Rose Glass’s first feature film takes us deep into the pious beliefs of Maud, who works as a nurse. Her next mission from God is to save the soul of her latest patient - someone who’s totally at odds with her way of living. Yet the two find a strange kinship. There is a deep sense of bleakness to the film, a hopelessness that lingers - that comes and goes like Maud’s faith. An inverted darkness against the light. Like faith itself, we’re left wondering what exactly is real and what isn’t. We’re placed firmly in Maud’s perspective. This is a film told entirely subjectively, from the central character’s viewpoint. This is how Maud sees the world.
And she see’s it as a grim place. A place that needs salvation. A place where it’s normal to punish yourself in service of a higher power. It’s a tense, brooding film that doesn’t even play like a traditional horror. More a character study, a woman in a room - with horror elements that puts you in a dark rapture. Like another great horror, Rosemary’s Baby, it relies more on ideas to shock rather than anything that happens in the shadows.
TL;DR Rose Glass’s debut is a powerful film about faith and the dangers of belief.
*Available for a small rental fee on Apple, Amazon, Google and YouTube in the US
and the UK.
Fact: The director started working on the script while still at the National Film and Television School.
Beautiful written!