Best Premiere Viewings of November 2023

1. Bitterroot Episode 1: Greed’s Dream (Johnny Clyde, 2023)

Initially conceived as a feature film, ‘Bitterroot’ has been transmuted into an online series, and its first episode is a pure surrealist bliss! A mesmerizing blend of photo-novel, painting, and 2D animation, it utilizes a dazzling barrage of phantasmagorical imagery to reach your subconscious mind. Elevating the viewing experience – akin to a hypnagogic trance – is an ethereal, mystifying score synergized with a cryptic, distorted voice-over. Johnny Clyde (The Forgotten Colours of Dreams) once again proves to be one of the most distinct voices of independent cinema.

2. Les chambres rouges / Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2023)

If I were asked to describe ‘Red Rooms’ in a single word, I would probably opt for ‘anti-sensationalist’, which also perfectly suits the author’s measured approach to the razor-sharp dissection of modern society, or rather, its evils, collective and individual alike, as well as to the stark, mystery-imbued study of a character fascinated by a heinous crime. Firmly anchored in the central, utterly magnetic performance from Juliette Gariépy whose micro-acting skills give Mads Mikkelsen a good run for his money, this stellar, thought-provoking, impressively cold, steely unnerving and formally ingenious psycho-drama/thriller needs no Hollywood-style ‘fireworks’ to keep you glued to screen. Right from the get-go set in a featureless, yet instantly captivating courtroom, it snatches your attention by virtue of extraordinary camerawork, especially the expert use of long takes, at once immersive and chillingly uncanny sound design, elaborate music score which elevates the bleakness of the atmosphere, and above all, incredibly pedantic direction marked by eerie, Haneke-like austerity, and to a certain degree, methodical mannerism of late Schrader. Beneath its ‘frigid’ surface of brilliantly played understatements, simmers a well of intense emotions, lending a refined patina to the proceedings...

3. Diabły, diabły / Devils, Devils (Dorota Kędzierzawska, 1991)

Dorota Kędzierzawska gently blurs the boundaries between innocence and eroticism in her feature debut – a highly poeticized coming-of-age drama that explores the budding sexuality of a teenage girl, Mała (lit. little one), against the backdrop of the tension between villagers and Romani nomads – ostracized and demonized by country bumpkins – in 60’s Poland. Eschewing dialogue in favor of stunningly beautiful, psychologically penetrating close-ups, she also paints one of the most romantic portraits of Roma people, immersing herself, the young heroine (Justyna Ciemny, absolutely wonderful in the central role) and the viewer in their songs and dancing. From the largely non-professional cast who give off Pasoliniesque vibes at times, she acquires a great deal of authenticity, as well as a strong sense of freedom, delivering the film of pristine energies and meaningful silences, with every look, smile, touch and step impregnated with keen lyricism.

4. La fiancée du pirate / A Very Curious Girl (Nelly Kaplan, 1969)

Chytilova’s feminist radicalism, Buñuelian gleeful irreverence, Papatakis’s anarchic verve, and Godard’s bold use of primary colors coalesce in one of the most entertaining cine-humiliations of capitalist patriarchy. Nelly Kaplan directs her feature debut with playful audacity and rebellious openness, channeling her confrontational zeal through Bernadette Lafont in the central role. Her vibrantly farcical story of a young woman’s liberation from the confines of provincial hypocrisy sees the weaponization of female sexuality as a form of modern-day witchcraft whose practitioner ‘doesn’t let herself to be burned’, in the words of the director herself. ‘A Very Curious Girl’ makes me very curious about other Kaplan’s films.

5. Scavengers Reign (Joseph Bennett & Charles Huettner, 2023)

Taking cues from Mœbius’s artwork, and Laloux’s cult favorites such as ‘Gandahar’, Miyazaki’s adaptation of ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’ manga, and Dudok de Wit’s masterpiece ‘The Red Turtle’, as well as from a number of movies involving a spaceship crew lost in an alien environment, Bennett & Huettner deliver one of the most imaginative pieces of science-fiction in recent years! ‘Scavengers Reign’ follows a group of survivors from a space freighter Demeter 227 who find themselves stranded on a gorgeous, yet not quite welcoming planet Vesta, and the utterly impressive world building alone is reason enough to visit this short series. Brimming with outlandish vistas and bizarre creatures that make up the setting’s intricate, not to mention awe-inspiring eco-system, it strikes you hard with its surreal-like qualities that are further enhanced by dream sequences and hallucinations, all presented in charmingly (and refreshingly!) quaint 2D animation accompanied by a mesmerizing score.

6. Žuvies diena (Algimantas Puipa, 1990)

Veronika’s reality resembles a disorienting dream, and her dreams are almost as tangible as off-kilter reality. In-between the two indistinguishable ‘extremes’ lies her writing with ‘imaginary exotic setting’, ‘characters who aren’t real’, and ‘everything messed-up on purpose’, in the words of her editor. ‘Why not talk to a film director?’, he asks, hinting at the meta-quality of the fragmented, freewheeling narrative, and quite probably referencing to Jolita Skablauskaitė’s work which served as the source of inspiration for Liucia Armonaitė and Regina Vosyliutė’s screenplay. Whimsically poetic, decidedly meandering and starkly intuitive in its stream-of-consciousness rapture, ‘The Day of the Fish’ stubbornly refuses to conform, placing the viewer in the heroine’s disjointed point of view, and employing a combined barrage of borderline oneiric imagery, dissonantly eclectic soundtrack, and often allusive dialogue to a hypnotizing effect. 

7. Papa les petits bateaux... / Papa, the Lil’ Boats (Nelly Kaplan, 1971)

Nelly Kaplan and her crew must’ve had a whale of a time on the set, because ‘Papa, the Lil’ Boats’ sizzles with their sparkling energies combined in a most fascinating way! Insanely farcical, cartoonishly silly, and brimming with a cult potential, this comedy sees a rich, not to mention shrewd heiress, Vénus ‘Cookie’ De Palma (outlandishly funny Sheila White!), transforming from a victim into a kicking, screaming, scheming and dancing, or simply put, seductively misbehaving nightmare for an unlikely band of  kidnappers. As they fall one after another in a series of ‘accidents’, unaware that their ‘brilliant’ plan is doomed right from the chloroformless start, Kaplan gleefully mocks greed, stupidity, possessiveness, and a capitalist paternal figure embodied by Sydney ‘son of Charlie’ Chaplin in a superb supporting role. She makes the most of the limited locations, with DoP Ricardo Aronovich (who filmed ‘Jaune le soleil’ by Marguerite Duras in the same year) capturing all the deliciously colorful zaniness with aplomb.

8. La giornata balorda / From a Roman Balcony (Mauro Bolognini, 1960)

Opening with a dizzyingly beautiful long, low-angle take that captures not only the dilapidation and poverty of a slum tenement, but its very soul as well, ‘From a Roman Balcony’ immediately pulls you into a bold deglamorization of Rome, as it follows a sexed-up ne’er-do-well protagonist, Davide Saraceno (Jean Sorel, his talent matched with good looks), in the seemingly futile search for a job. More interested in women than work, with a teenage fiancée (angelic Valeria Ciangottini) and newborn son waiting at home, Davide crosses paths with three gorgeous paramours-to-be, manicurist Marina (Jeanne Valérie), prostitute Sabina (Isabelle Corey) and mysterious, truck-driving Freja (Lea Massari), approaching his goal in most unexpected ways, through the Roman underbelly. Heavily censored at the time, Bolognini’s social drama appears like a bridge between neorealism and modernism, seducing the viewer with Piero Piccioni’s smoky jazz score, and Aldo Scavarda’s brilliant cinematography, all the while thematically anticipating one of its co-writer’s debut – Pasolini’s ‘Accattone’ (1961). 

9. Finský nůž / The Finnish Knife (Zdenek Sirový, 1965)

From Věra Chytilová and František Vláčil to Juraj Herz and Juraj Jakubisko, the Czechoslovak cinema of the 60’s holds a number of must-see titles for any true cinephile. Even the lesser known / overlooked films such as ‘The Finnish Knife’ tend to leave a strong impression. Co-written by director Zdenek Sirový, and Pavel Juráček who would work alongside Chytilová’s on her cult feature ‘Daisies’ in the following year, this psychological drama / road movie belongs to the ‘misguided youth’ drawer in the New Wave archives. A taut examination of guilt, it revolves around two adolescents, Tonda (Karel Meister) and Honza (Jaromír Hanzlík), who flee from justice believing the latter is responsible for murdering a man with the titular knife. On the way to Poland, the boys’ friendship is put to a severe test, because apart from the (unproven) crime, they don’t share much in common, with their disparate inner states and insecurities externalized through the beautiful chiaroscuro cinematography of Jan Čuřík (The White Dove, Joseph Killian, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), editor Jan Chaloupek’s insightful cuts, and Wiliam Bukový’s mood-swinging score. At times, it appears that Sirový leans on Jan Němec’s masterful debut ‘Diamonds of the Night’ (1964), although his piece is not nearly as bleak, nor does it slip into surrealism, with tonal oscillations handled deftly.

10. Jowita / Jovita (Janusz Morgenstern, 1967)

Daniel Olbrychski – memorable as a leading protagonist in Andrzej Wajda’s masterful epic ‘The Ashes’ – brings playboyish charm to the role of an architect and athlete, Marek Arens, whose obsession with an enigmatic woman from a masquerade party leads him down the spiral of frustration and self-pity. His flings, as well as an ostensibly meaningful romance with Agnieszka (Barbara Lass, utterly delightful), and frequent visits to concerts of classical music, are all captured in captivating B&W (Jan Laskowski, who was also behind the camera of Morgenstern’s sparkly debut ‘Good Bye, Till Tomorrow’), accompanied by mood-establishing, if slightly underused jazzing by saxophonist Jerzy Matuszkiewicz. Helmed with a keen sense of modernity characteristic of the European cinema of the time, Jowita is a delectable treat for any 60’s-loving movie buff.

11. L’ordre et la sécurité du monde / Last In, First Out (Claude D’Anna, 1978)

“Where imperialism is retreating, it is robbing, destroying and starving. Rich countries are preparing a bloody future for themselves.”

Three years after ‘Trompe l’oeil’, Marie-France Bonin (aka Laure Dechasnel) and Claude D’Anna come up with another mystery as co-writers and star + director duo, but this time, they take cues from Hitchcock and Melville, with some proto-Lynchian vibes channelled through Dennis Hopper’s Methadrine-sniffing, Frank Booth-anticipating baddie, Medford. Set against some shady dealings involving higher-ups from European and American fractions opposed over a vague Third World exploitation business, the opaque thriller-drama revolves around Hélène Lehman (Bonin), a young woman mistaken for a spy after a passport mix-up with Bruno Cremer’s journalist hero, Lucas Richter, on the railway line from Paris to Zurich. Although dialogue-heavy, and reliant on long-distance calls turned leitmotif of sorts, the film is fraught with tension simmering under its ‘autumnal’ surface, and establishing an atmosphere at once gravely conspiratorial and frigidly melancholic, permeated with the oppressive sense of urgency, paranoia and danger. Emphasizing the gloom is Eduard van der Enden’s neo-noirish cinematography of predominantly muted colors, and clickety-clack humming of a train sparsely interrupted by a jazzy / electronic score intermittently elegiac and foreboding. 

12. Slike iz života udarnika / Life of a Shock Force Worker (Bahrudin ‘Bato’ Čengić, 1972)

Brimming with bitter irony and unwavering determination, ‘Life of a Shock Force Worker’ employs acerbic humor and meticulously composed vignettes somewhat reminiscent of Parajanov’s tableaux vivants or rather, pieces of naïve art to tell the story of the rise and fall of proletariat, focusing on a Bosnian coal miner, Adem. Based on a script co-written by director Bahrudin Čengić, and Branko Vučićević (Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator / Innocence Unprotected / Early Works), this satirical dramedy is beautifully lensed by acclaimed cinematographer and filmmaker Karpo Aćimović Godina (The Medusa Raft, also penned by the aforementioned Vučićević), featuring an authentic cast of both professional and non-professional actors.

13. La vocation suspendue / The Suspended Vocation (Raúl Ruiz, 1978)

Watching a film signed by Raúl Ruiz always poses a challenge, and ‘The Suspended Vocation’ situates itself in the pantheon of the most difficult ones. Semantically complex and formally playful, this unconventional drama is – on the surface – about ideological disputes between two fractions, the Devotion and Black Party, within French Catholic Church. However, it delves much deeper than that, into the (left-wing) politics, the nature of cinema, philosophical conundrums, as well as into one’s own dichotomies reflected in the film’s ‘dual’ structure, with Pascal Bonitzer and Didier Flamand portraying a protagonist, father Jérôme, in color and B&W parts, respectively. Add to that the fact that Ruiz operated in exile, and you’re in for a Borgesian treat, impossible to grasp in one viewing, and too heady in its intricacies to be approached again. One thing is sure, though, and that is the beauty of cinematography by Sacha Vierny of ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ fame, and Maurice Perrimond who collaborated with Ruiz on ‘The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting’ released in the same year.

14. Plaisir d’amour / The Pleasure of Love (Nelly Kaplan, 1991)

Cécile Sanz de Alba, Dominique Blanc and Françoise Fabian are all superb as witty seductresses Jo, Clo and Do in Nelly Kaplan’s sexy, campy, quirky, surreal, visually stunning and most elegantly directed comedy.

15. Lekcja martwego języka / Lesson of a Dead Language (Janusz Majewski, 1979)

“I cannot fight evil. What shall we fight and what for anyway? We live in void. We have impressions and hallucinations sometimes, but no one really knows, what it is.”

An allegorical, stunningly framed chronicle of a dying, morally ambiguous soldier at the end of the Great War, operating as a moody meditation on death.

La Telenovela Errante / The Wandering Soap Opera (Raúl Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento, 2017)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

In the initial vignette of the master Ruiz's posthumously released film, a middle-aged man flirts with his brother's wife, comparing the touching of her body to travelling across Chile, moments before handing over his own muscles (!) to her. "I thought they were like nerves." - she remarks gleefully, squeezing the pieces of raw meat between her fingers. Until that scene, the fourth wall is already broken (The people are watching us), the co-relation between divorce and leftist politics discussed, with reality dissolved and re-assembled as a wry parody of a soap opera, all in a matter of minutes!

Although it addresses post-Pinochet Chile to which Raúl Ruiz returned after years in exile (not to mention it was shot almost three decades ago), The Wandering Soap Opera feels pretty modern, relevant and universal, its timelessness stemming from the singular way it captures the bitterly ludicrous absurdity of any given country in transition, at any given point in history. One delirious dream after another, we are treated to refined, Bunuelean surrealism, humor so dry and irrational it makes Monty Python appear sensible, and the linguistically befuddling barrages of dialogue that shake you back and forth, then suddenly turn right to leave you left in a dimly lit corner of the disorienting world that out-Lynches Lynch in his Twin Peaks element or rather, out-Maddins Maddin's 'story within story ad infinitum' game of The Forbidden Room.

Telenovela tropes, from over-the-top performances to loosely defined rules regarding life and death, are borrowed solely to be wittily and mercilessly subverted into a puzzling and somewhat mildly frustrating narrative of Borgesian paradoxes lifted to another level. The TV-inside-TV existence of the characters lost in-between their own and others' soaps (with actors playing actors playing their roles or something along these lines) becomes increasingly phantasmagoric, not ceasing even when the director is 'resurrected' for the behind-the-scenes epilogue to announce: "Okay, the film's finished." 

Adding to the deconstructive 'fantasy' are both the deliberately slushy, yet unobtrusive score and grainy 16mm visuals that brilliantly mimic the cheapness of endless TV dramas and, simultaneously, come laced with unmistakably Ruizian flourishes of playful shadows, deceptive mirrors and peculiar camera angles. The weird cinema enthusiasts will also find much to appreciate in little, not-to-be-spoiled details which trigger an avalanche or two of delightful WTFery.

Three Crowns of the Sailor (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

"If all the jerks spread their wings, we’d never see the Sun."

Under the purple skies, an infinite number of doorways (do not) exist and each entrance leads into a labyrinth which has no end, myriad of cul-de-sacs and unattainable possibilities forged in a bottomless dream. Once you find yourself inside of it, your only companion is N (as in Nihil) who is not to be trusted even though everything he says seems to be truer than truth. Hear him whisper poisonous secrets into your ear, as the river of Styx turns into a vast sea.

His stories always begin, but they never reach their epilogues and why should they? His characters are phantoms, because he is a phantom as well; a butterfly that has been trapped in the chrysalis state forever, alone in its pain, in life that's nothing but an absurd wound. But still, let him guide you further and further, let him show you the old, fading portraits of a nameless mariner sailing with the (un)dead; the double-tongued Blindman and a virgin courtesan, Maria; an immortal child of Singapore and two brothers from Tangier; a beautiful, yet mean exotic dancer, Mathilda, and the black doctor who knows Bible by heart.

Forget the past, the present and the future, as they merge into One that simultaneously was (not), is (not) and will (not) be inscribed in the absence of time buried in deep waters. Abandon the language of reality and embrace the cryptic symbols of a sublime, transcendental fantasy in which there is a place that is both no place and all places - a whole new Universe worth exploring and getting yourself lost in.

Tell your inner philosopher to keep silent and behold his/her glorious, wordless tirade transforming into La Poesía, singular and rebelliously surreal. Only three Danish crowns to repel the shadows, but be careful - Enigma must not die...

Three Lives and Only One Death (Raúl Ruiz, 1996)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

NOTE: The first four paragraphs might sound like a spoiler.

In his second to last role, Marcello Mastroianni simply excels at playing a traveling salesman, Mateo Strano, who falls under time-eating fairies' spell for twenty years, occupying an enchanted Parisian apartment that happens to be just across his previous home. In the meantime, his wife Maria (Almodóvar's regular Marisa Paredes) has been remarried to André (Féodor Atkine) whose morning hangover portends his death at Mateo's hands, after their 'chance encounter' and a strange offer.

However, maestro Mastroianni also takes the role of Georges Vickers - a respectable professor who teaches negative anthropology at Sorbonne University until he decides to assume the life of a 'clochard'. That's how he meets a kind-hearted hooker, Tania (Anna Galiena), who is actually a president of a huge corporation driven to prostitution by her perverse, stuttering ex-husband (Jacques Pieiller). Not to mention that Vickers has a frequently peevish, wheelchair-bound mother.

But wait, in the third story that is - like the abovementioned two and the one that follows - narrated by an unnamed radio announcer (Pierre Bellemare) who, almost certainly, stands as a symbol for someone or something, MM is a butler who responds only to a sound of bell (or in French, cloche) and who is actually an eccentric, filthy rich benefactor of an extremely affectionate young couple, Martin (Melvil Poupaud) and Cécile (Chiara Mastroianni).

Now, hold your breath still for yet 'another' protagonist portrayed by Mastroianni Sr. - the industrialist Luc Allamand who learns from his lawyer (Jean-Yves Gautier) that his fictive mother, sister and daughter are arriving in town. Oh, and let's not forget his 38 years younger wife Hélène (Arielle Dombasle) and the fact he may be Strano, Vicker and Butler, though it's hard to imagine him leading so many parallel lives.

So, what we have here is a delightfully schizophrenic puzzle featuring all the witty wordplay, identity shifts, barrages of dialogue, intellectual trickery, surrealistic interweavings and preposterous meta-twists you could wish for, all masterfully packed as an intriguing, light-hearted and immensely amusing prequel to Lynch's Lost Highway. (Seriously, these two complement each other like yin and yang!)

On top of that, Ruiz (who has become one of my favorite directors during September of 2017) pokes some fun at Europeanization, given that all the events are in some way related to Rue Maastricht which alludes to TEU. Identifying it as a spreading disease, he invents a phony psychoanalyst who congratulates Allamand on his vivid imagination and sees his split personality as a sign of success.

Beneath the playfulness of his tight, clever script co-written by Pascal Bonitzer (with whom he'll cooperate once more on Genealogies of a Crime), one can recognize a melancholic tale about the hardships of old age, senility in particular, which adds an emotional resonance to the irational proceedings. As the film progresses, you have an impression that you are following the protagonist down the spiral of madness while simultaneously being lifted to the realm of dreams.

This oneiric quality is supported by the entrancing visuals - Luc Chalon's meticulous, flamboyant set design (including Escher-esque bric-à-brac, as well as the prominent use of mirrors) and Laurent Machuel's stunning cinematography paired with purposely disorienting in-camera effects. Under Ruiz's watchful eye, these illusionists make wonders you are unlikely to see elsewhere... well, that is unless you're seeing some other masterpiece from Ruiz's oeuvre, such as Love Torn in a Dream.

Three Lives and Only One Death (Trois vies et une seule mort) inspires in mysterious ways, warning you that 'extreme happiness is a form of misery and extreme generosity a form of tyranny'.

Genealogies of a Crime (Raúl Ruiz, 1997)

 ☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Rooted in 'Ruizian' dream logic and rife with deceptive shadows, one-way mirrors, puzzling mind-games and switched identities, Genealogies of a Crime appears as a delirious, Hitchcockian-lite (pseudo) thriller by way of Robbe-Grillet, delivering in spades an elliptical story, eccentric characters, sharp verbal exchanges, twistedly intelligent humor, weird psychoanalytic role-play, elaborately designed sets, mystery-inducing score, outstanding camerawork for a heightened surreality and superb performances, especially from the ever-reliable Catherine Deneuve in a dual role with Freudian subtext, as well as from Melvil Poupaud as an 'innocent killer' not responsible for any of those three funerals...

Vanishing Point (Raúl Ruiz, 1984)

 ☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Vanishing Point (originally, Point de fuite) has to be one of the most absurd dreams ever captured on screen. Described as 'a B-side to his (Raúl Ruiz's) magnum opus City of Pirates' at MUBI where it's currently playing, this experimental 'mystery drama' (for the lack of a better term) revels in bewildering non sequiturs involving an unnamed protagonist portrayed by Steve Baës (who's called by his first name by Ana Marta's enigmatic faux femme fatale).

At the beginning, he arrives on an island by cab (!), his head wrapped in bandages. Later, he says he had an accident at work, but soon after we see him making sketches for the cover of a book that will contain the islanders' stories (or something along these lines). In the meantime, he frequently plays cards with his landlord (Paulo Branco) and has plenty of strange encounters - several with Anne Alvaro's poker-faced secretary-like character who fills him in on the doctor's arrival and tells him about her weird nightmare. There's a couple of siblings living down the street and a murder occurs or is imagined by Steve.

And before you can say 'a boat turned into a pencil turned into a shark, as a sea turned into a Chinese soup, but not a bamboo one', you have been mind-boggled to the point of no return or rather, vanishing point. The preposterous dialogues that at times seem to be improvised and at other times pretty melodramatic sound exactly like utter balderdash one conjures up during REM phase. Complemented by the disorienting score and grainy grays of splendid B&W cinematography, they raise not only eyebrows, but many questions as well.

Who is the actual hero/dreamer of a puzzling story - Baës or Ruiz? Is he the illustrator or someone else illustrates him? What's with all the hate for eggs and chickens and is it the reason to leave the States? Would you accept fish from a stranger - a red herring, perhaps? Why would anyone stick a love letter into a bottle of beer? If your uncle Olaf speaks Italian, does that make him a traitor? In case you don't have uncle Olaf and do have a sister, has she ever asked you to promise her you'll go to hell? Who is a hermit lying on the rocks? Do answers even matter? Does anything at all matter?

As you might have already guessed, Vanishing Point is a tricky illusion and not a movie you can munch popcorn along with, because there's a great chance you end up with salt in your eye...