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Red Screamer wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 10:50 am 31 Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still

Finally combing through other lists, and wanted to highlight this as a great inclusion and one of the toughest cuts on my list. It's inarguably a more interesting and vital piece of art than a lot of what I did include, and if I had revisited it recently for the project, I probably would have

I've also seen your #50, totally ready to apply an elastic tolerance for some low-budget sleaze, but just couldn't click with it

No Breillat thread? I just caught up with Une vraie jeune fille and Tapage nocturne and found them really striking. The first is something of a Bressonian fetish film with a heroine that throws herself headfirst from sensation to sensation with no lines drawn between the pleasant and the unpleasant. The tone is set when, on her first night of summer vacation, she strips in front of a mirror, but instead of things getting steamy, she throws up on herself and then stays up writing all night covered in vomit "because the smell clears her head."

Breillat goes from punk to new wave for her second film, but despite its glossier style and less aggressive content, I can imagine it irritating many viewers much more. The protagonist is another spiraling sexual adventurer, juggling a handful of affairs at the same time, but here a tortured ego is the center of her character instead of an id, with many scenes hinging on her changing her mind multiple times or attempting reverse psychology on herself. Breillat does some pretty extraordinary work with the actors and her clinical approach to her obsessive heroine as well as the film's casual boundary-breaking make it a predecessor of the work of Annie Ernaux, among others. In looking up the film to get a better handle on what it's doing, I stumbled across some pretty interesting things. Breillat calls it a "hidden remake of Une Femme est une femme" and Luc Moullet considers it a masterpiece:

Luc Moullet (trans. mine) wrote:Tapage nocturne was my first real encounter with Catherine Breillat. It came out the same week as Apocalypse Now. For me, there was one dud and then the perfect film that was Tapage nocturne, explosive even in its imperfections. It was the discovery of a new universe. After that, I read all of Catherine Breillat's literary work. It's the prototype of the love film, not a film of mad love but of the madness of love. I even asked myself if it wasn't something more than cinema. It's a very moving story. We feel someone carried away by passion who expresses herself completely, a heart stripped bare. I was particularly surprised by the ending when the heroine cries. It's not a melodrama at all, but there is such a tension in the film's design and in its "Breillatian" dilemma that we find ourselves confronted with a profound pathos. There is also a real formal novelty with, for example, the appearance of comic book bubbles to highlight texts or characters. With this film, I understood the importance of Breillat. It's a shock to find yourself like that, face to face with a giant of cinema.

I think his memory is a little hazy, though, since a comic book bubble only appears once, during the opening credits.

I've been working my way through Kino's Joaquin Pedro de Andrade set and, while not everything is on the same level for me, I adored the Conspirators (1972). It's a quite biting tale of a rebellion that quickly falls apart and the titular conspirators turning on one another during their respective interrogations to save themselves from death. Andrade's camera keeps a very tight mise-en-scene, such that his actors are regularly walking in and out of frame as if swapping places on stage. The juxtaposition between the conspirators' grandstanding during their preparations, and sobbing and begging as they try to save face after their arrest is rather brilliant. Strongly recommend this and certainly worth considering as a best of the 70s when this decade rolls around again for the lists project.

In 10 years!

There's no time but the present to watch those orphans! (Also just posted here since Andrade doesn't appear to have a dedicated thread and it felt awkward posting about in the Kino one)

Edit: I spoke too soon!

therewillbeblus wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 3:42 am An easy list-maker is his first feature-length film, Euridice BA 2037, a surreal reworking of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice as reimagined by the brothers Quay (although their careers started around the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if their approach to adapting Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life in particular was partly-inspired by this film's vibe). The crackling fragmentation of reality as we experience the isolated heroine's removal from significant elisions regarding her past and fate are remarkably conveyed with audio-visual wit. The experimental project's enigmatic persistence may frustrate some viewers, but I can't imagine anyone being bored by its continually-surprising and aesthetically-arousing essence, with Nikolaidis applying his keen perceptive skills at locating and leaning hard into new angles in order to cultivate beguiling perspectives all-but-ensuring a reliably stimulating endeavor.

Just saw this one and I loved it so much that it’s warranted a status as an all-time favorite even after the first watch. Between this and Nikolaidis’ Singapore Sling, he has a genuine talent to rework beloved classics into nightmarish perversions of themselves and I think the way he slowly builds up the horror in the film, building towards a reworking of his darkly hilarious opening into a final burst of pessimism and cruel mockery, is nothing short of brilliant. It’s undoubtably also a very confusing film and while I can assure you that I’m not a smart enough person to say what this is definitively about, I do wonder if Nikolaidis is using the baseline of the Euridice/Orpheus to critique society’s treatment of women.
I began to notice this with the way Nikolaidis focuses in on the Euridice’s chores, which in a weird way echoed how Chantal Akerman focused in on Jeanne Dielman’s routine in her titular film and how they’re both treated like tools of dehumanization as they’re focused into doing the same routines over and over again while the shot compositions make them appear often small, especially with Euridice, who is constantly boxed by her surroundings until she all but blends into them. I also found it interesting how Euridice herself is never explicitly given a name in this film and is often referred to by her apartment number, which again dehumanizes her by refusing to give her an identity and, in turn, becomes a commentary on how society refuses to engage with women as individuals. Additionally, there’s a lot of moments that could be linked to how a lot of men’s lustful desires leading to them overstepping their boundaries has lead to growing paranoia in women, especially in the ever present voyeuristic people peering inside Euridice’s house, but also in the fact that her status as a woman has made dangerous for her to even step outside without fear of danger snatching her up.
There’s a lot of additional details that help my argument but as with Nikolaidis’ Singapore Sling, it’s better to experience the film as blind as possible in order to under just how deliriously hellish it is (although some knowledge of the Orpheus story is very much recommended). Thanks TWBB for introducing me to this and I’m excited to see more of Nikolaidis’ work than I was before.