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domino harvey wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 9:20 pm I imagine once Criterion releases Soleil Ô, which has been restored by the WCP, everyone will be able to tick off the rather unexpected country box of Mauritania. There will be a lot of buzz for this one once people actually see it, as it's an incredibly caustic look at the treatment of a black African man in late 60s France. The move is a hot mess, with a lot of sloppiness and obvious faults, and I think a viewer needs to be honest with its raggedy construction and Nouvelle Vague/Czech New Wave-aping (I can already see the thinkpieces calling this the second-coming without really weighing its flaws). But it also has moments of unforgettable power, and the ending is a cathartic howl at an oppressive world that leaves no other outlet but frustration. Plus holy shit this movie had an amazing poster-- if Criterion uses anything but this, they're mad:

swo17 wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:48 pm I remember Lucía being great but it's been a long time since I've seen it

domino harvey wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:01 pm My thoughts on Soleil O, which given the current climate really should have been released solo

domino harvey wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 9:20 pm I imagine once Criterion releases Soleil Ô, which has been restored by the WCP, everyone will be able to tick off the rather unexpected country box of Mauritania. There will be a lot of buzz for this one once people actually see it, as it's an incredibly caustic look at the treatment of a black African man in late 60s France. The move is a hot mess, with a lot of sloppiness and obvious faults, and I think a viewer needs to be honest with its raggedy construction and Nouvelle Vague/Czech New Wave-aping (I can already see the thinkpieces calling this the second-coming without really weighing its flaws). But it also has moments of unforgettable power, and the ending is a cathartic howl at an oppressive world that leaves no other outlet but frustration. Plus holy shit this movie had an amazing poster-- if Criterion uses anything but this, they're mad:

therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:45 pm Has anyone seen any of the titles outside of Pixote?

swo17 wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:48 pm I remember Lucía being great but it's been a long time since I've seen it

Humberto Solas; Cuba 1969; Mr Bongo Films/Region 0; Certificate 18; 159 minutes; Aspect Ratio 1.66:1 anamorphic; Features: none

Film: Made at just 26, Humberto Solas' second feature remains one of the most ambitious of all Cuban films. Its three separate stories about individual women (all named Lucía, otherwise unrelated) highlight pivotal points in Cuban history: the 1890s war against Spain, President Machado's overthrow in 1933 and Castro's 1960s. Each episode has its own distinct tone: the initial impassioned melodrama with flashes of savage, almost Buñuelian cruelty gives way to something closer to Visconti's The Leopard before concluding with a claustrophobic kitchen-sinker that raises thorny questions about the role of women in a notionally equal but traditionally macho society. All three Lucías are passionately involved with unsuitable men (Spaniard Rafael, revolutionary Aldo, pathologically jealous Tomás), their female comrades providing much-needed perspective alongside the gossip. If it seems didactically contrived in bald outline (the Lucías also represent the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the newly-liberated peasantry), some thrilling individual set-pieces more than compensate.

Disc: It says much for the film that it survives a dismal VHS-quality transfer whose picture has been further softened by being converted from a clearly NTSC original. The lack of context-setting extras piles further insult on top of existing injury.

Pavel wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:28 pm Surprised they didn't pair Touki bouki with Atlantics.

therewillbeblus wrote: Thu Dec 17, 2020 6:53 pm I'll probably wait until I receive the physical set in January to watch the other films in the third volume, but Bahram Beyzaie's Downpour is so excellent that, if the other films are even a fraction of its caliber, I'll be heavily reconsidering my votes for Release of the Year. This is a hard film to pin down, but in a sense it's a romantic comedy set in the backdrop of a socio-political drama, a comedy-of-manners flipped around where the austere intellectual hero is a fish out of water in the more modest community; and yet we find that the relationship between this man and this milieu encourages reciprocal readings of character, for his humility at times shines against the inflexible traits of the town, after the dynamic appears concretely reversed earlier on. The concept of 'usefulness' is touched upon at one point where Hekmati is looking for how others, including his students, can be of use to him, without separation of focus on his own usefulness to the community, which seemingly rejects his imposition based on obliviousness and unwillingness to compromise against cultural differences. However, the opposite becomes closer to the truth: where the ability to see a usefulness is actually the bridge that allows Hekmati to feel affinity with his students and be accepted by them, his own usefulness received and respected in this new environment- not in the way he may have first envisioned but in a manner that's far more rewarding as he manages to flex his own terms of endearment.

I loved the ambiguity in the depiction of the working-class woman shaking up the intellectual as he breaks from his own sense of novelty via ego-inflation and struggles to contend with this novel grace in corporeal form, away from his comfortable vantage point. The ambiguity is both a dramatic deflation of perspective and a comic inflation of newfound energy, at times reaching surreal heights. There is a theme of cultural competence woven into this narrative, in how human connection suffers from deficits between social contexts but the language of attraction binds us with a sixth sense. There are declarations made here that feel right out of classic rom-coms, with your typical emergence from rigidity toward sublime liberation of character working within a socio-political border-line satire with experimental formal techniques, making a strange cocktail for the medium. The film comes alive constantly against expectations, and I loved soaking up all its expressive flooding that seemed to fall in rhythm with the protagonist’s own surrendering of conservative attitudes. The subtext of the political climate that also surrounded this time period historically layers this experimental framework, as the impassioned revolutionary poetry both inside and outside of the film becomes reflected in its methodology.