Claire Denis

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: Claire Denis

#101 Post by senseabove » Tue Jul 21, 2020 11:15 am

Okay... I hope there's a newer transfer than was used for DVDs released fifteen years ago, which would seemingly warrant mention for one of the most celebrated living French filmmakers and would probably be described as "a restoration" of some sort by the company releasing it, since their press release for the online film series mentions several "restorations" as well as, more narrowly, "digital restorations" for several other films, but whose promotional website for L'Intrus includes a still that, unfortunately, looks like this.

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criterionsnob
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Re: Claire Denis

#102 Post by criterionsnob » Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:08 pm

I watched the Metrograph stream of L'intrus, and while it looked like an older source, it certainly looked much better than my old DVD.

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Oedipax
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Re: Claire Denis

#103 Post by Oedipax » Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:51 pm

criterionsnob wrote:
Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:08 pm
I watched the Metrograph stream of L'intrus, and while it looked like an older source, it certainly looked much better than my old DVD.
Argh, I wish I had known this earlier. It looks like L'intrus is already unavailable on their streaming platform.

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Oedipax
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Re: Claire Denis

#104 Post by Oedipax » Fri Aug 14, 2020 8:35 pm

Sadly, the Metrograph screening of Trouble Every Day looked worse than the various DVD releases. Massive macroblocking apparent from the opening moments of light shining on the Seine. So bad that I wouldn't completely rule out some kind of connectivity issues, though I'm on a fast fiber connection.

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criterionsnob
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Claire Denis

#105 Post by criterionsnob » Fri Mar 12, 2021 10:57 am

I emailed Metrograph about the possibility of L’intrus on Blu and here’s their response:
I love to hear this! We definitely have plans to bring this out on dvd / blu-ray! When that time comes we will post about it and put it in our newsletter. I don’t have an exact timeline now, but know it is definitely in the works.
Last edited by criterionsnob on Fri Mar 12, 2021 10:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

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criterionsnob
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Re: Claire Denis

#106 Post by criterionsnob » Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:17 pm

After noticing their logo on the Criterion Channel stream, I emailed Cinema Guild and got this response:
Thanks for getting in touch. Yes, we are plan to release 35 Shots of Rum on Blu-ray this year. We will announce once we have more details about the release.

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: Claire Denis

#107 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Thu Apr 29, 2021 7:44 pm

criterionsnob wrote:
Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:17 pm
After noticing their logo on the Criterion Channel stream, I emailed Cinema Guild and got this response:
Thanks for getting in touch. Yes, we are plan to release 35 Shots of Rum on Blu-ray this year. We will announce once we have more details about the release.
Awesome. I just watched this on the channel last night and was pretty blown away. I'd love to see more Denis (L'intrus!) get quality physical releases.

GoodOldNeon
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Re: Claire Denis

#108 Post by GoodOldNeon » Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:16 pm

35 rhums is the film of the month on the ARTE Cinema YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNsvaB0xQC0

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Claire Denis

#109 Post by zedz » Sun Aug 07, 2022 4:44 pm

Stars at Noon isn't as good as Both Sides of the Blade (which isn't as good as any number of Denis films, yet still packs a punch), but it's an intriguing misfire that compartmentalizes into a number of different films.

1) It's another fine, atmospheric post-colonial (though the "post" bit definitely gets smacked around a bit in the course of the narrative) Claire Denis mood piece, with one of the best Tindersticks scores yet. This part of the film gets an A, but there's far too little of it. The plot is always getting in the way.
2) It's a pretty good political thriller, with plenty of messy ambiguity and queasy uncertainty, oblique threats and collateral damage. B+ for this part.
3) It's a lousy relationship drama, suffering the fatal double blow of a lack of chemistry between the leads and frankly dreadful dialogue. Margaret Qualley is placed in that unenviable "acting for two" position, because Joe Alwyn is as DOA as a male model who can't find his light. It's never remotely believable even as l'amour fou (something Juliette Binoche managed to pull off in Both Sides of the Blade.)

As a long-time follower of Denis, I found enough to keep me diverted, but this is thin gruel and one of her weakest features. John C. Reilly's very brief appearance brings a bit of energy, and suggests that Qualley's character's back story would have made for a much more interesting film. It's probably the most interesting part of this film, even though you only get it in glancing asides and inferences.

pistolwink
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Re: Claire Denis

#110 Post by pistolwink » Tue Aug 09, 2022 1:42 am

That's too bad since this was apparently a dream project for Denis for a while, although the actors ultimately cast were not her first choices IIRC.

Denis speaks fluent if strongly accented English in interviews, and she's lived in the U.S. for several spells, but there's a common thing where directors moving out of their native language sometimes have an understandly tin ear for dialogue and line readings. (That recent Jia Zhangke movie was a good—bad—example.) I wonder if that happened here.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Claire Denis

#111 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:32 pm

So I've finished off my blind spots of Denis' features and revisited a couple, and still predominantly find myself in the 'like, not love' camp, so it was to my surprise how floored I was by U.S. Go Home. It's a testament to Denis' range how opposing but no less poetic this is to her elliptical masterpiece, L'Intrus. Instead of obfuscating narrative, temporal, or, well any, holds on the happenings, U.S. Go Home is a stripped-down, intimately layered meditation on youthful preoccupation and multisensory experience in the vein of Fucking Amal, The Myth of the American Sleepover, Les Bonnes Femmes etc., with the latter's blend between delightfully earnest self-conscious yearning and titillating risk captivating every sense I use to engage with cinema, just as its central principal's senses are pulsating as she takes in the intoxicating aura of her immediate surroundings. What an arousing hour- a perfect film.

It's funny how my other favorite Denis' are the similarly simplified 24-hr narrative Friday Night and the aloof and chaotic Both Sides of the Blade, the latter of which fits more in line with L'Intrus in its dense ambitions, and the former aligning with U.S. Go Home's urgent attention to the sublime. Denis often administers restraint but is also typically blunt about her thematic goals, though I find those latter two a bit more confounding and mature in regards to her aims, whereas the love films are emblems of lyrical bliss yet no less adult in their own ways.

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: Claire Denis

#112 Post by Matt » Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:23 pm

Friday Night is an incredible film. I wish I knew what I could do to help free it from the clutches of Fox Lorber. It seems like Metrograph managed to do that for L’intrus only to lock it up again on their exclusive streaming platform.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Claire Denis

#113 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:48 pm

Agreed, it was far and away my favorite until this recent revisit of L'Intrus proved greater returns, and I had more time to reflect on Both Sides of the Blade, which I'm more convinced than ever is Denis' most complex and alienating work, one-upping Antonioni to the point of disgust. Friday Night is still second, behind U.S. Go Home though, just not the only Denis I flat-out love anymore.

Also, after finally getting to her two postcolonial meditations following the underwhelming Chocolat, and liking them a lot more than I expected to, I feel like I owe that first film a rewatch since it's the only Denis I'm currently apathetic towards.

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Persona
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Re: Claire Denis

#114 Post by Persona » Thu Aug 11, 2022 11:16 am

Glad to see the growing appreciation for L'Intrus in here. I am not sure why that film feels so overlooked in Denis' oeuvre. Hits on an obscure register that so many other arthouse films attempt but often miss.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Claire Denis

#115 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:33 am

Le 15 Mai finally got English subs on backchannels, and it seems that right from her first feature, Denis was deconstructing genre into the empathic spaces of raw human vulnerability, yet resisting a surrogate blending by keeping our vantage point at an observant distance. Here it's the sci-fi genre, in what at first appears to be a Twilight Zone episodic rendition of Groundhog Day's premise mixed with the social alienation of melodrama, an individual trapped by skewed and irreconcilable isolated subjectivity. This kind of idea is probably best engaged with in the 30-minute duration of Denis' film, which ostensibly doesn't have ambitions to run the scope of a Happy Death Day's exercise incorporating horror related to trauma that necessitates breathing room, or Palm Spring' collectivist love story cultivated over repetition breaking down individualistic wills, etc. Instead, we experience the reality of acute anger, WebMD-equivalent obsessive self-diagnosing, derealization, and other sharp responses from a quarantining crisis of individualized reality- something I find terrifying. Sadly the film doesn't bask in this enigmatic space that would go on to define Denis' elliptical work to come, and defaults hard into a Twilight Zone reveal that elicits a similar kind of unsettling horror in identity destruction, but through abolishing the discomfort of reality-testing via receiving answers (versus, something like Upstream Color, for instance, which makes us stew in the hazy unknown with its principals). I feel like Denis read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (though I'm aware it's actually "The Tunnel under the World," the Blade Runner connections are uncanny) and decided to do something different with it, and then went and ended her film without any of the rich subtext she grazed for twenty minutes prior. Oh well, still a treat, and a fine student film

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Peacock
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Re: Claire Denis

#116 Post by Peacock » Sun Aug 21, 2022 4:41 am

I’m loving the discussion here but now I’m curious: what do ya’ll think about No Fear, No Die?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Claire Denis

#117 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Aug 21, 2022 12:29 pm

I'd probably give it the edge over J'ai pas sommeil (which I also liked) in terms of Denis' postcolonial works following Chocolat's more direct engagement with the ideas. It's a particularly effective look at how individuals function within physical and metaphysical spaces under social contracts, as the two dark-skinned immigrants take opposing approaches, either falling into complacent rhythms or try to flex the boundaries of their agency within these systems. The cockfighting milieu was an interesting allegorical vehicle with many opportunities to evoke both cognitive parallels and sensational responses, certainly compared to J'ai pas sommeil's serial killer plot with immigrants' alienation at the forefront.

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senseabove
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Re: Claire Denis

#118 Post by senseabove » Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:42 pm

A 4k restoration of No Fear No Die is among the titles in this year's NYFF Revivals:
Restored in 4K by Pathé in 2022 with the help of the French National Center of Film and Motions Pictures (CNC) at Hiventy Laboratory.

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zedz
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Re: Claire Denis

#119 Post by zedz » Thu Oct 06, 2022 5:56 pm

The Tindersticks soundtrack for Stars at Noon (possibly the best thing about it) has just been released, though there doesn't seem to be any physical version.
bandcamp

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Claire Denis

#120 Post by Matt » Mon Oct 17, 2022 7:53 pm

zedz wrote:Stars at Noon…a lousy relationship drama, suffering the fatal double blow of a lack of chemistry between the leads and frankly dreadful dialogue. Margaret Qualley is placed in that unenviable "acting for two" position, because Joe Alwyn is as DOA as a male model who can't find his light. It's never remotely believable even as l'amour fou (something Juliette Binoche managed to pull off in Both Sides of the Blade.)
I’m saddened to have to concur with this. I love Margaret Qualley, but I can’t quite believe her as this character. She might be credible as an in-over-her-head Vice-style reporter, and how she got in over her head would definitely be the more interesting story.

The political aspect of the film (which is a 50/50 mix of The Quiet American and The Year of Living Dangerously) feels very dated, vaguely sketched, and never builds to much urgency or suspense. I don’t think the plot (such as it is) even begins to cohere until about 90 minutes in.

I don’t think Denis is capable of making a bad film, but this just reeks of “troubled production” or producer meddling or Denis just losing interest at some point but being obligated to complete it. At heart, though, it just feels like a bad script—a talky, dutiful adaptation of a novel with no attempt to translate it cinematically.

I actually like Joe Alwyn as the bland, clueless, meddlesome “ghost of colonialism” in his increasingly dingy white linen suit, pale skin, and golden hair, reminiscent of Audie Murphy in the Mankiewicz version of The Quiet American. I think Robert Pattinson might have been able to conjure up more smolder and chemistry with Qualley, but the character is essentially just a spark to set the plot into motion and it’s a mistake to spend so much of the running time to make him seem appealing. So, yeah, Qualley (and her character) has to shoulder the entire film, which is unfair, unwise, and unfortunate.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Claire Denis

#121 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:49 pm

Yeah, I'm one of the few who loved her other film from this year, but the most interesting thing about Stars at Noon is its title. Easily her worst feature and a waste of Qualley's talents in this role. Hearing about the more pronounced metaphor within the source makes me question why Denis didn't engage with that idea, especially since she's not exactly implementing her usual elliptical or lyrical wit here either

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Claire Denis

#122 Post by The Narrator Returns » Mon Oct 17, 2022 9:32 pm

I'll buck against the consensus here and at Cannes and say that I loved Stars at Noon, I've only seen about half of Denis's features but I'd put this closer to the top of that group than the bottom. It reminded me a lot of my favorite Denis, Friday Night, there's the same kind of overwhelming intimacy to how Denis films two people awkwardly circling each other that I found totally engrossing, even while Denis complicates it with the characters' complete ignorance to the dire situation around them. And I thought Qualley was magnificent, especially her goofy, almost clownish close-up acting that always caught me by surprise (and I liked Alwyn's simplicity as a counterpoint to her, I worry Pattinson would just upstage her if he was in that part). Great use of Benny Safdie as the brick wall that Qualley runs headfirst into as well, he's got a terrific character actor career separate of his day job.

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diamonds
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Re: Claire Denis

#123 Post by diamonds » Tue Oct 18, 2022 4:58 pm

I really liked it as well, and thought it was handily her stronger 2022 feature. The complaint that the plot takes a while to cohere is a bit funny to me since narrative has almost always taken a backseat to rhythm in Denis' films (and the rhythms here are exquisite). It's true perhaps, but then one could also argue the same for To Have and Have Not, one of the films I thought of while watching this American adrift abroad. Of course, it's a matter of personal taste whether one finds Denis' study of Margaret Qualley—the way she strolls down the street, the way she sticks her head out the window in a cab, the way she carries her shoes or slips out of her dress; her skin, her hair in the humidity, and (especially) her wide, expressive eyes as she steels herself for sex or watches Daniel from afar—as compelling as Hawks' study of the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. But unlike the electricity that powers Hawks' film, I think the mismatch between Trish and Daniel here is sort of the point. I haven't read the novel, but Denis has said that it's a novel about "two people who are not meant to be together."

Like Petzold's Transit, this isn't exactly a love story so much as a failed attempt at a love story between two people who are thrust together due to tumultuous political circumstances. They have both been "cut loose," to use Trish's words, he from his handlers, she from her employers and the political contacts she's been sleeping with. When she tells a group of indifferent locals that she doesn't have any Yankee amigos, the frightening admission is that she is truly, utterly alone. The point isn't smolder or passion, it's desperation. And there is something really desperate and achingly human about the way these two people throw themselves at and cling to each other when they are all each other has in a foreign land, each in way over their heads. When Trish tearfully clutches Daniel after her confrontation with the Costa Rican police, or when Denis' camera lingers on their hands as they grasp each other before making a big decision, or when Trish just repeats, "Cover me up, cover me up..." I found myself very moved. Because Denis' filmmaking remains so sumptuous and tactile, questions of chemistry never entered my mind. I simply believe it when these two are clawing at each other. I like the way Denis & Gautier slowly introduce color into the love scenes, beginning with the pallid nighttime scene in Daniel's hotel hours after they first meet when their relationship is purely transactional (she needs money, he wants sex), all the way to that beautiful slow dance bathed in purple, all alone together.

And like Transit (which also places a period piece into a modern context, albeit one with a much larger intervening time interval), Stars at Noon is a film that takes stasis and obstruction as its central motifs. There is a practically dizzying array of barriers in the film, barriers which are invisible, bureaucratic, pecuniary. Trish must beg to use the phone, pay a bribe to make a video call. She is barred from using a door to exit, blocked from eating breakfast at a hotel buffet ("Guests only"). She can't leave the country without a passport (held up because of her "stupid articles"), can't get a plane ticket without American dollars, can't change her córdobas into dollars without a passport. Daniel can't access his hotel room because the Costa Rican police are camped outside it, and when he tries to speak to the receptionist on the phone he's unable to communicate with her without a knowledge of Spanish—the barrier of language. At one point late in the film, their car gets stuck in a deep puddle on the way across the border, and Denis' camera lingers on some soldiers passing by in the opposite direction as they trudge through the water, something of a cruel sight gag. The pandemic slots in so naturally to these concerns, not only adding to the ambient air of unease but also providing one more barrier for entry into buildings or across borders. Another layer of confinement.

At every moment in this film we are acutely aware of the limits of the world Trish finds herself in which are dictated by governments and money—in other words, “the exact dimensions of hell”. (Take a shot every time money is mentioned or exchanged—you'd end up drunker than Trish pretty quickly!) Her little motel room is a temporary oasis in part because it has the backdoor built for when the building operated as a brothel, which promises both freedom of movement (clients can come and go as they please) and privacy, a precious commodity that is all but nonexistent in this world of constant surveillance, tracking, and monitoring. (Sound familiar?)

Regarding the political situation in the film being both "dated" and "vaguely sketched," for me it's precisely the latter that precludes the former. CIA spooks meddling in foreign affairs will never go out of style; it's not like the US has drastically departed from its exploitative foreign policy in the last few decades even if the geography has shifted. So Benny Safdie arrives channeling Peter Bogdanovich's slimy Singapore operator in Saint Jack (which might make for an interesting double bill with Stars at Noon, two films about sex and exile, a pimp and a prostitute). He complains about the lack of manners he observes among Trish and the locals when ordering food, making sure to always say "please" and "thank you" himself to the waitress refilling his drink. The irony is painfully apparent, a politeness that belies the systematic raping of the region on behalf of the United States' interests. (A key line: "Don't you know what a delusional asshole he is? Giving charts and documents and a whole economic future to a rogue state?" "Rogue" as in not kowtowing to the US, "future" as in freedom). Trish's direct manner is far more honest; she knows the score, knows that this world runs on transactions. Note too the comparative ease with which the CIA man moves through the world, materializing in the COVID tent as if by magic. Or when he addresses a bartender in English and doesn't care at all that the man can't understand him; the language barrier does not exist for powerful men like himself.

I'm also intrigued by the way Trish occasionally voices this imperialist mentality herself, telling the cab driver his car stinks or yelling in a moment of frustration about "American tanks coming and crushing your hopeless country." And the two leave some significant destruction in their wake:
SpoilerShow
Daniel causes the cab driver to be executed, and Trish's offer to buy off a man's car leads to it being set ablaze. Denis makes a point of showing us the tears in his eyes while the smoke rises and the couple flees. These aren't exactly their fault, being as they are acts of violence perpetrated by powerful state actors. They are simply there, suggesting that there are no right moves to make when one is the target of a hostile government, another layer in a film where exploitation and state violence are never front and center but always more than a mere backdrop.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the final exchange between Trish and Daniel, which seems a bit too underplayed for what it is: a final extinguishment of love. But the final scene between Trish and Subtenente Verga is a perfectly bleak note to end on, for me more chilling than the final shot of Bastards. Very early on in the film Trish tells Daniel, only half-jokingly, "We're all for sale." By the end, Denis seems to conclude this is true. We are all pawns to much larger forces that remain vague and remote. The world demands that everyone have a price, so everyone is a whore. The best we can do is hope that whoever comes along to fuck us is somewhat agreeable.
Last edited by diamonds on Tue Oct 18, 2022 8:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Claire Denis

#124 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Oct 18, 2022 6:45 pm

diamonds wrote:
Tue Oct 18, 2022 4:58 pm
At every moment in this film we are acutely aware of the limits of the world Trish finds herself in which are dictated by governments and money—in other words, “the exact dimensions of hell”
It's the Hell allegory that didn't feel explicit enough for me, and where I felt the movie failed in reference to what the book is supposedly weaving more strongly into its text. While I agree that there's incessant transactional details and insurmountable obstacles imbedded in the film, a sense of mood around these conditions didn't fester in an effective way, nor did the blissful reprieves from oppressive forces between lovers like in the dance club. That scene reminded me a bit of the best extended sequence in U.S. Go Home where Martine wanders around the party amongst the dancers, except here it rings hollow whereas that movie’s similar aesthetic and emotional engagement is riveting and sublime, even if both implement the same kind of elastic intimacy with their lead.

Anyways, I enjoyed reading that really passionate defense, diamonds! I wish I saw the movie you did

hedge
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2022 3:40 pm

Re: Claire Denis

#125 Post by hedge » Wed Oct 19, 2022 7:00 pm

Hopefully we're going to see a decent chunk of her filmography on Blu-ray soonish.

Confirmed restorations of:
Chocolat (via Claire Denis' Instagram)
No Fear, No Die (4K restoration screened at NYFF)
Trouble Every Day (already on Blu-ray in Germany from a 4K restoration)
The Intruder (if Metrograph are still planning to do it)

Also, Blu-ray's of 35 Shots of Rum, Both Sides of the Blade and (maybe) Stars at Noon.

Would love to see Friday Night and US Go Home restored.

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