F for Fake [1973]

 Orson Welles’ delightfully irreverent, discursive and playful film F for Fake – through its impish and exuberant celebration of fakery, chicanery and double bluffs – was one final act of wily chutzpah by the man who loved subverting boundaries. Conjoined with Abbas Kiarostami’s late-career masterpiece Certified Copy in their shared admiration for fakes and teasing questions on authenticity, while ironically being ravishingly original works themselves, it operated in the intersection of documentary, essay and hybrid – as it often blurred the lines separating non-fiction from fiction. It primarily focused on two fascinating charlatans who drew Welles to this film in the first place (François Reichenbach had initially planned to direct it, but happily became its producer instead). On one hand there was Elmyr de Hory, a master art forger who fooled renowned art galleries with his fakes thanks to his insouciance and brilliance; now retired, he’s settled at Ibiza where he regales his guests with wry anecdotes. Joining him was Clifford Irving, de Hory’s biographer, who then insolently walked in his subject’s footsteps by writing a fake “authorized autobiography” of Howard Hughes. Along with his infectious portraits on the two men – who he treated with undisguised fondness as fellow journeymen – Welles freely deployed the canvas for musings on how art, like magic, is an amalgamation of truth, lies, illusions and sleight of hand, and then proceeded to self-deprecatory reflections on his own journey as an artist – using false identities and fake stories, and even fictionalizing Howard Hughes in Citizen Kane – and, in arguably its most irresistible sections, amusing meditations and “stories” on Picasso. Captivatingly shot in grainy colours, it extensively featured his muse Oja Kodar in a series of sultry, shape-shifting personas.

Director: Orson Welles

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Social Satire

Language: English

Country: France

Il Posto [1961]

 Ermanno Olmi’s tender, low-key, delicately strung and achingly beautiful masterpiece Il Posto – shaped from his personal experiences – remains such an acutely evocative and vividly realized work despite hardly much happening during its runtime. Though it carried the legacy of neorealism – with its humanist story, on-location filming and non-actors – its exploration of urban loneliness in the backdrop of a rapid post-war societal shifts towards giant corporations and social mobility possibly placed it closer to similar examinations by Antonioni, Godard and Tati, even if this stood apart on account of its hushed, understated and bittersweet tone. I, instead, found it profoundly reminiscent of two Jiří Menzel masterworks – Closely Watched Trains and Larks on a String – in their shared poetic restraints while dwelling on mundane moments, blend of wry humour and absurdist irony with pathos, critiques of conformism, and muted comings-of-age of gauche, soft-spoken young guys. The said protagonist is Domenico (Sandro Panseri, whose perplexed demeanour, in turn, mirrored Václav Neckář from the two Menzel films), who follows his parents’ advice for a job at a big nameless organization. He travels from his cramped apartment in the outskirts to Milan, becomes besotted with the ethereal Antonietta (Loredana Detto, Olmi’s future wife), gets hired, is initially posted as a messenger and finally becomes a junior clerk in this vast bureaucratic setup. Gorgeously shot in grainy B/W – imbued with intimacy and melancholy – the film’s two most unforgettable segments featured the fleeting relationship between the two youngsters during the job interview, and a New Year’s Eve office event that transitioned from pensive to exuberant through droll humour and staging, and which reminded me of another Czech New Wave jewel, viz. Miloš Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball.

Director: Ermanno Olmi

Genre: Comedy-Drama/Coming-of-Age/Romantic Comedy/Social Satire

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Todo Modo [1976]

 Elio Petri’s agitational and subversive cinema – and in turn Italian political cinema from its “years of lead” period, of which he was a leading force – reached a fever pitch with Todo Modo. This was a blistering and ferocious assault on the then political establishment – especially the Christian Democratic Party –, the Vatican’s ability to ensure their religious stranglehold through crafty manoeuvrings, and wealthy oligopolistic industrialists. In Petri’s hands – who could blend bravura experimental style with fearless left-wing lens – it was also a chilling examination of power, opportunism, hypocrisy, corruption and fascist tendencies, and the parasitic and chameleonic natures of the aforementioned troika. Adapted from Leonardo Sciascia’s novel of the same name, the feral satire is nearly completely set inside a stunningly conceived and designed Brutalist bunker – the cold, modernist and claustrophobic set design by Dante Ferretti gave the film an expressionistic and even sci-fi look, while enhancing its macabre tone – where the country’s most influential men have assembled for a few days, while a mysterious epidemic rages outside. They’re ostensibly there for a monastic retreat and spiritual cleansing; however, soon enough it’s clear that cunning machinations to further entrench their positions are what’s uppermost in their minds. Two men take centre-stage in this arrestingly orchestrated chaos – “il Presidente” (Gian Maria Volonté), a clear stand-in for Aldo Moro, whose religious fervour and sexual repressions are matched by his hunger for further consolidating his political position; and a creepy, hell-raising priest (Marcello Mastroianni) with skeletons in his closet – and this hilariously grotesque and anarchic setup attained surreal proportions as the men start facing violent deaths. Ennio Morricone composed the film’s score while the exceptional cast featured Michel Piccoli in a cameo.

Director: Elio Petri

Genre: Black Comedy/Political Satire/Ensemble Film

Language: Italy

Country: Italy

Property Is No Longer a Theft [1973]

 The title for Elio Petri’s blistering comedy Property Is No Longer A Theft can be taken both at face value and with a heavy dose of irony; that, and the droll ingenuity of its phrasing, readily recall the two preceding films in his ‘Trilogy of Neurosis’, viz. the blazing masterpiece Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and the abrasive agitprop The Working Class Goes to Heaven. Though considerably underrated, it remains an unequivocally brilliant work thanks to the interplay of aesthetic ferocity and intellectual dare that the iconoclastic filmmaker brought in while blending radical politics and ferocious polemics with deliciously gonzo, sleazy, provocative B-movie aesthetics and even Brechtian splashes. The narrative is built around a farcical war of attrition between Total (Flavio Bucci), a young bank cashier who’s literally allergic to money and calls himself “Mandrakian Marxist”, and a wealthy, corrupt and glibly offensive businessman called “The Butcher” (Ugo Tognazzi). Upon witnessing the bank manager’s sycophancy towards the latter, Total quits his job, begins stalking Butcher – the very embodiment of the evils of capitalism for him – and starts stealing his belongings – inane things at first, before progressing to expensive objects and even his mistress (Daria Nicolodi). The Butcher, meanwhile, avoids reporting Total to the maniacal investigating cop (Orazio Orlando), as he’s massively over-reported his loss to the insurance. This anarchic film’s script was as unhinged as its characters, which also comprised of a vaudeville master thief (Mario Scaccia) and Total’s bemused father (Salvo Randone), and is bookended by three riotous sequences – a chaotic bank robbery where the clerks unleash vicious dogs upon the robbers; a salesman’s hilarious demo of anti-theft devices; and an amusing paean to thieves and robbers.

Director: Elio Petri

Genre: Crime Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Political Satire

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Slap the Monster on Page One [1972]

 Marco Bellocchio’s tour de force media satire Slap the Monster on Page One was a confluence of thrilling genre cinema and radical political filmmaking, with the pulpy title splendidly mirroring the film’s biting tone, incendiary theme and hardboiled form. Written by Sergio Donati who’s best-known for his collaborations with Sergio Leone, the film continued – with cutting fury – Bellocchio’s blazing and subversive streak from Fists in the Pocket and China Is Near, albeit with the polemic turned up a notch along the lines of Rosi, Pontecorvo and Petri. It began on a throbbing note as documentary footage – including a reactionary speech being delivered by Ignazio La Russa, a right-wing politician who’s presently Italy’s President of the Senate, to vilify surging left-wing rallies and anti-government demonstrations – segued into the narrative as a group of young rebels is seen pelting stones into the office of Il Giornale, a newspaper that peddles fascist agenda to its conservative readers. Its powerful and sleazy editor-in-chief Bizanti (Gian Maria Volonté) injects news items with nefarious slants and insinuations with aims of “indirect propaganda” aligned to the business interests of his odious boss (John Steiner); the sequence where he coaches a young reporter, while “fixing” his write-up, was both disturbingly prescient and savagely funny. When a beautiful college student belonging to a bourgeoise family is found raped and murdered, Bizanti laps up this “golden opportunity” to concoct a false narrative – and clinically frame a left-wing activist for the violent crime – to further the political machinations of his power-seeking boss ahead of upcoming elections. Volonté was frighteningly brilliant as the kind of rotten, self-serving and manipulative dealer in disinformation and fake news that’s infested today’s reactionary mainstream journalism.

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Genre: Black Comedy/Political Thriller/Political Satire/Social Satire/Media Satire

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

China Is Near [1967]

 Marco Bellocchio’s second film China Is Near retained the wild farce and blasphemy of his astounding debut feature Fists in the Pocket. If it was slightly less feverish and feral, it was as unapologetically offensive and risqué, and upped the satirical ante and ribald buffoonery while delivering a Molotov cocktail aimed at political, social, religious and sexual mores. In a fascinating coincidence, Godard’s dazzling gem La Chinoise and this – which released in the same year – didn’t just share zany humour, anti-bourgeoise filmmaking, Maoist references and impudent nonconformity, they even shared the Special Jury Prize in that year’s Venice Film Festival. Its principle targets are three siblings belonging to a hideously funny family of affluence and aristocracy in a provincial Italian town – Vittorio (Glauco Mauri), the rotund eldest brother, has tried his hands with various centre-left political options and has presently settled for the Socialist party to escape his guilt, look progressive and attain power; Elena (co-writer Elda Tattoli), the middle-aged, promiscuous and still glamourous sister, loves taking young partners from lower social classes, while ensuring that they never stake claim to her wealth; and Camillo (Pierluigi Aprà), the repressed and unhinged youngest of the lot, has started a three-man hardline Maoist cell to combat his dilemmas with aristocracy and Catholicism. Meanwhile, Carlo (Paolo Graziosi) and Giovanna (Daniela Surina), former lovers and belonging to the working-class, begin a scheming journey up the class chain, as the former seduces Elena while the latter decides to succumb to Vittorio’s ogling, hoping to marry rich. Splendidly shot by Tonino Delli Colli in baroque B/W and idiosyncratically scored by Ennio Morricone, it featured public brawl, fratricidal assassination attempt, failed abortion and other assorted craziness.

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Political Satire/Social Satire/Romantic Comedy

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

La Cérémonie [1995]

 Claude Chabrol had impishly quipped that La Cérémonie – one of his greatest accomplishments, and which I’d been craving to revisit ever since I read A Judgement in Stone, the terrific source novel by Ruth Rendell – that it’s a “Marxist film”. This deliciously insidious tour de force work wasn’t just a cutting dissection of class structures, dynamics and conflicts, it literally culminated into a violent class war. He transplanted the novel from the British to the French countryside, retaining the unnerving interplay between a provincial locale’s overly tranquil environs and its sordid undercurrents with sinister possibilities, while replacing the author’s faux-reportage prose with a venomously ironic tone that made this an icily controlled domestic thriller. The malevolent tale is spearheaded with stunning aplomb by two of the most fabulous French actresses – Sandrine Bonnaire, as the taciturn, eerily withdrawn and inscrutable Sophie who’s pathologically ashamed of her illiteracy, and Isabelle Huppert, as the chirpy, eccentric, borderline unhinged and devilishly volatile Jeanne. A ticking bomb is planted the day the wealthy, cultured and deeply snobbish Lelièvres – comprising of the ravishingly beautiful Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset), her quietly arrogant second husband Georges (Jean-Pierre Cassel), his gently condescending college-going daughter Melinda (Virginie Ledoyen), and her gauche adolescent son – hire Sophie as resident maid in their isolated mansion, and the fuse gets lit when the latter ends up befriending Jeanne, an impetuous postmistress who loves prying into people’s secrets and holds a smouldering grudge against the family for their privilege and indifference. Further, the feral pair are subconsciously craving for delayed vendetta against the social order for their disreputable pasts, and their roiling resentments erupt into a shockingly manic climax that Chabrol must’ve especially relished filming.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Claude Chabrol

Genre: Crime Thriller/Black Comedy

Language: French

Country: France

The Other Way Around [2024]

 The Other Way Around is a break-up dramedy with an idiosyncratic twist. The striking and assured Ale (Itsaso Arana), an indie filmmaker, and Alex (Vito Sanz), an easy-going actor of middling success who’s collaborated regularly with Ale, have decided to end their relationship, for reasons not shared, after having been a long-standing couple. Not only do they continue to be on amicable terms, barring the odd disagreements, while planning their separation – scouting apartments for one of them to shift, dividing up their books and DVDs, informing their friends, colleagues, neighbour, English tutor and even plumber, etc. – they even decide to throw a party to celebrate their break-up, which was once jocularly suggested by Ale’s philosophically-inclined father (played with deadpan touch by director Jonás Trueba’s real-life father Fernando Trueba). As they go about inviting people, they’re met with varying degrees of befuddled reactions, all the while convinced that they’ll eventually get back together. While a carefree, light-hearted, droll and low-key work in every sense, it had a few quirky elements at play underneath the surface. For one, it’s impishly self-reflexive as it obliquely cited Classic Hollywood movies about divorced couples getting back together, while also cheekily referencing Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre and his complicated relationship with Liv Ullmann. Further, it’s also a casually understated exercise in postmodernism as, amusingly, Ale has just completed an offbeat film on a similar subject starring Alex. Shot with a breezy air in Madrid, and featuring engaging turns by the two leads, its most self-consciously funny moment involved intellectuals debating whether Ale has made a “linear” or “circular” film – i.e. a plot-driven work or one of ideas – which could easily be extended to Trueba’s work too.

Director: Jonas Trueba

Genre: Comedy/Marital Comedy

Language: Spanish

Country: Spain

Dying (Sterben) [2024]

 Matthias Glasner, in his first theatrical release in 12 years, made his two key influences amply clear through a poster of Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and clippings from Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, alongside a wry quip on the latter masterwork’s questionable suitability for Christmas viewings. Dying, therefore, was a movie awash as much with bleak meditations on mortality and troubled familial dynamics as with ironic and darkly funny portrayals of these weighty issues. The film’s seemingly depressive title, consequently, was a demonstration of the director’s sardonic sense of humour. Further, while the 3-hour runtime might appear a daunting proposition, it’s narrative brilliance, marvellously etched characters, nuanced depictions of messy complications, and meticulous balancing between crushing seriousness and deadpan levity made this a sharply observed, brutally unsentimental and thoroughly engrossing watch. The exceptionally dysfunctional Lunies family was at the heart of this grand soap opera, and it comprised of Tom (Lars Eidinger) – a composed but heavily stressed conductor who’s rehearsing the titular musical composition by his volatile friend Bernard (Robert Gwisdek) and playing surrogate dad to his ex-wife Liv’s (Anna Bederke) infant daughter –; his emotionally wrecked siter Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) – a full-blown alcoholic who loves singing and is having an injurious affair with a married colleague ((Ronald Zehrfeld) –; and their aged parents, viz. Lissy (Corinna Harfouch), the cancer-afflicted and music-loving mother, and Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer), whose disintegration on account of Parkinson’s disease was heartbreaking to watch. All actors were terrific in this work set over five loosely overlapping episodes with shifting POVs, and two of its scenes – a catastrophic orchestral performance and a searingly candid mother-son conversation – underscored the film’s glorious interplay between high tragedy and low comedy.

Director: Matthias Glasner

Genre: Family Drama/Black Comedy/Ensemble Film

Language: German

Country: Germany

A Traveler’s Needs [2024]

 A Traveler’s Needs – Hong Sang-soo’s third collaboration with Isabelle Huppert – is a film of spontaneous comings and goings, loopy repetitions, eccentric digressions, and fleeting impressions. This is, furthermore, a droll and idiosyncratic tableau on improbable encounters and oddball language lessons. Huppert, whose fabled career is filled with incongruous, anomalous and unhinged characters, is a delectably strange cat here as Iris (Huppert), a whimsical and coquettish French woman of an unknown past and dubious disposition. Since her arrival in Korea, she’s been drifting in Seoul, earning money by teaching French to well-off locals using a self-devised method that’s hilariously weird, and sharing apartment with a naïve young guy for whom she’s somewhere between an attraction, wise mentor and unlikely mother figure. Over the amusing and playful narrative’s loosely-strung chapters, we see Iris teaching and interacting with a young woman who’s become fond of her quirky tutor; being interviewed by a woman (Lee Hye-young) who wants to employ her but is flabbergasted by her pedagogy, and then bonding with her and her genial husband (Kwon Hae-hyo) over makgeolli – Iris’ beverage of choice – and the poetry of Yun Dong-ju, who was arrested and killed at the age of 28 for his anti-Japanese resistance in occupied Korea during WW2; having meandering conversations with the infatuated Inguk (Ha Seong-guk) with whom she stays; and drinking more makgeolli and listening to bad English translations of Kwon’s poems. In a deadpan aside – the only stretch without Huppert in it – we see Inguk being berated by his passive-aggressive mother (Cho Yun-hee) who’s shocked at his choice of roommate. The minimalist script, consequently, unfolded as a charming and observational take on aimless travels, intercultural companionships and existential ennui.

Director: Hong Sang-soo

Genre: Comedy/Slice-of-Life

Language: English/Korean/French

Country: South Korea

The Substance [2024]

 What happens when you mix a cocktail that’s equal parts grotesque body horror, caustic showbiz satire, deliriously lurid and grisly B-movie, and fierce feminist critique on male gaze, shallow beauty standards and institutionalized ageism? You get a brash, deliciously nasty, wickedly funny and intensely polarizing film like Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, that’s unapologetically in-your-face and dripping with chutzpah. However, for the same reasons, it also felt overdone and unwieldy at times, with its lofty ideological ambitions lacking in complex undertones, even if – admittedly – Fargeat was probably never aiming for nuance or subtlety. This, incidentally, is also a rare body horror film directed by a woman, thereby pairing it with fellow French filmmaker Julia Ducournau’s Titane. The titular “substance” is an experimental black-market drug that spawns a younger and more beautiful self of oneself; the only catch being, the two alternate versions must co-exist symbiotically to avoid horrific repercussions to both. Elisabeth (Demi Morre), once a fabled Hollywood goddess but now leading aerobics shows for the TV, is summarily fired by the network’s boorish and lascivious boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) – a deliberately noxious caricature given the name – as she’s just turned 50. Faced with anonymity and irrelevance, she falls into the trap and takes the sinister drug, and thus emerges – through a literally spine-crushing process – her young, saucy and sexy doppelgänger Sue (Margaret Qualley). Soon enough a mutually destructive battle develops between them, as they spitefully start treating one another as rivals. Moore and Qualley weren’t just excellent in their respective roles, they also complemented each other as psychedelic variants of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The garish colours and trippy visuals, meanwhile, were reminiscent of De Palma and Verhoeven.

Director: Coralie Fargeat

Genre: Sci-Fi/Body Horror/Showbiz Satire/Black Comedy

Language: English

Country: France

Grand Tour [2024]

 Diverse elements that constitute cinema – from its technical facets and grammar to its sociocultural roles and historicity – were evoked with joyous abandon in Grand Tour by the virtuoso Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes. Forming a fascinating companion piece to his sublime masterpiece Tabu – in its tapping into colonial-era tapestry where nostalgia is sharply counterpointed by irony; chronicling of an infectious travelogue self-consciously stripped of exoticism; and channelling the palette of classical-era movies while deconstructing that and even celebrating its artifice – this wistful, eccentric, gorgeously composed, feverishly mounted and wildly experimental gem was ingeniously constructed in the form of a diptych. In the first act we follow Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a British civil servant stationed in Rangoon in 1918 who flees in a fit of existential panic on the prospect of marriage to his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate) arriving for that purpose; he travels to Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, Osaka, Shanghai and further – initially to escape, but eventually through delirious inertia of motion – only to keep finding cheerful telegrams from Molly informing him that she’s happily in pursuit. In the second act we switchover to the optimistic Molly and follow her indefatigable journey, undeterred by Edward’s abandonment. Gomes, in a playful and idiosyncratic formal choice, alternated the story of the globetrotting lovers – shot in 16-mm on soundstage and accompanied by voiceovers whose languages changed based on the countries they’re in – with essayistic present-day footage of those places, some of which he’d shot before Covid stuck and directed the rest remotely. Further, though set in the past, one often sees them juxtaposed with anachronistic components, and this dazzling collapsing of the past and the present reminded me of Petzold’s engrossing film Transit.

Director: Miguel Gomes

Genre: Comedy/Romantic Comedy/Road Movie/Adventure

Language: Portuguese/Burmese/Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese/English

Country: Portugal

The New Year That Never Came [2024]

 Delving into incidents linked to Ceaușescu’s totalitarian regime, and the proclivity for bleak, ironic and wordy canvases, continue to be recurring motifs and tonal choices for current Romanian filmmakers too, like their trailblazing Romanian New Wave forbears. Following Metronom and Libertate from 2022 and 2023, respectively, Bogdan Mureșanu’s glorious debut feature The New Year That Never Came – a riveting hyperlinked portmanteau film that’s filled with tense paranoia, gripping desperation, cutting humour and exquisitely controlled chaos; cinematographed with understated brilliance; and set to a pulsating soundtrack – took us right into the eve of the dictator’s fall on 22^nd December 1989. The narrative, which composed of multiple interconnected strands that coalesced into a mesmeric 20-minute climactic sequence – stunningly accompanied by Ravel’s Bolero that progressively reaches its apotheosis, and wherein the claustrophobic square format dramatically changed into liberating wide-screen – crisscrossed between 6 individuals and unfolded over 2 days. TV station Director Stefan (Mihai Calin) must rapidly replace the footage of an actress in a pean to Ceaușescu as she’s defected; theatre actress Florina (Nicoleta Hancu), chosen as the replacement, wants to lose this “opportunity” at any cost; Stafan’s son, ironically, is on a reckless defection plan himself; the latter is under surveillance of state security officer Ionut (Iulian Postelnicu), whose aged mother wants to cling to her old apartment slated for demolition; meanwhile Gelu (Adrian Vancica), a factory worker tasked with shifting furniture, has just realized that his son has naively posted a letter that could get him executed. Hancu was the standout among the excellent cast, while Gelu’s story – redone from an acclaimed short by Mureșanu – was the most hilarious in this dazzling tapestry that gradually built towards an explosive crescendo.

p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES).

Director: Bogdan Muresanu

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Political Satire

Language: Romanian

Country: Romania

Miséricorde (Misericordia) [2024]

 Alain Guiraudie channelled Claude Chabrol – the latter’s recurring love for delivering cutting and subversive social critiques through tales of passion and crime in provincial France – in his delectably teasing pastoral noir Miséricorde. The film also possessed a morbid sense of humour – that was at its most darkly funny in a sequence where the protagonist is served mushrooms for dinner that’ve grown at the site of a murdered man’s corpse, recalling Imamura’s penchant for macabre fun – and an increasingly absurdist streak, interlaced with charged homoerotic overtones. It began on a creepily banal note, as the protagonist – shot from his POV – drives through winding country roads in near silence; one can already sense that unseemly developments await at his destination. He’s Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), a soft-spoken baker presently out-of-work, who’s returned to his bucolic hometown of Saint-Martial to attend the funeral of his former boss who he admired. Things take uncomfortable turns from get-go as the middle-aged widow (Catherine Frot), who figured Jérémie was in love with her deceased husband, offers him an extended stay at her place and is poker-faced about the ensuing intimacy, while her volatile and aggressive son (Jean-Baptiste Durand) – possibly triggered by some repressed memories – is increasingly hostile to Jérémie as he thinks that the latter is planning to seduce his mom, which rapidly escalates into violence. Jérémie, meanwhile, has a soft-corner for an unemployed pot-bellied loner, while an impish local priest (Jacques Develay), who’s also an avid forager of mushrooms, is attracted to Jérémie. The tranquil environs of this sleepy village evidently mask a saucy core rippling with delicious amorality and sizzling carnality, and this duality found sly accompaniments in this droll, playful and earthy work.

p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES).

Director: Alain Guiraudie

Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Black Comedy

Language: French

Country: France

Carnival Is Over [2024]

 Fernando Coimbra, who’d shot to fame with his multi-award-winning debut film A Wolf at the Door, returned to his Brazilian milieu after a considerable gap with his deliciously twisted and riotously entertaining third feature Carnival Is Over. By infusing grand Shakesperean themes of ambition, lust and power – slyly channelling Macbeth from Lady Macbeth’s perspective – into the pulpy and lurid B-movie palettes of 80s neo-noirs and crime thrillers, Coimbra delivered a dark, violent, wickedly funny and gleefully nasty blend of highbrow and lowbrow that continuously subverted viewers' expectations right till the hilariously messy climax. Valério (Irandhir Santos) and Regina (Leandra Leal) are a married couple happily invested in their kinky role plays and living in a luxurious villa overlooking Rio de Janeiro. He’s never wanted to get into his father’s criminal underworld business even if his wealth was accorded on account of that; his father’s death, unfortunately, has complicated his exit plan, as he isn’t just riddled with debts, his scheming uncle – who’s taken ownership – is hatching plans of his own. Egged by the luscious, volatile, self-serving and splurging Regina, Valério sets in motion a counter ploy to get rid of his uncle and take charge of the operations so that he can then sell it. Ironically, once he tastes the allure of this netherworld, he takes to it like a duck to water, thereby triggering a fatal game of distrust, deceit and betrayal between the couple. The film’s sardonic humour and unpredictability were accentuated by Leal’s superb turn, Valério’s organic transformation and Regina’s mom who dishes out bad advices. The pulsating sound design, that ranged from silences and discordant notes to frenzied beats, made it all the more riveting.

p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES).

Director: Fernando Coimbra

Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Black Comedy/Marital Comedy

Language: Portuguese

Country: Brazil

Camera Buff [1979]

 Camera Buff, which established Krzysztof Kieślowski as an essential voice in world cinema, powerfully evoked his rich background as a former documentary filmmaker as well as his sublime prowess in crafting profound social, political, existential and moral inquires through narratives. It also stirringly exhibited self-reflexive elements – be it his own early days as amateur cinephile or his ethical grappling with the repercussions of documenting “truth” in complex political climates that ultimately influenced his decision to switch forms – through Filip (Jerzy Stuhr), a once easy-going man, doting husband and carefree worker, who discovers a magnetic love for cinema, becomes an amateur documentarian, experiences political and existential awakenings at the cost of marital and professional stability, starts understanding both the vitality and predicaments of his images, and eventually decides to train his lens on himself. Four key moments shaped his journey – his impulsive purchase of a 16mm camera to film his new-born daughter; being commissioned by his boss (Stefan Czyzewski) to shoot their factory’s jubilee celebration and then coaxed into submitting that at a festival; confiding into his troubled wife (Malgorzata Zabkowska) that he wants deeper experiences instead of simple contentedness, thereby cementing their marital collapse; and a work of activism inadvertently leading to the expulsion of a senior colleague (Jerzy Nowak) he’s fond of. Shaped by exceptional performances spearheaded by the outstanding Stuhr, delightful use of wry humour in the script, and engrossing visual compositions, the film’s two particularly unforgettable sequences involved the airing of an immensely moving docu that he’s made on a disabled colleague and his instinctive urge to view his wife’s departure through a frame, and featured a cameo by Kieślowski’s great namesake Krzysztof Zanussi as himself.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

p.p.s. Watched it at the 2025 Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES). 

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Genre: Drama/Political Satire/Marriage Drama

Language: Polish

Country: Poland

Calcutta 71 [1972]

 In Calcutta 71, Mrinal Sen constructed a fierce and subversive examination of impoverishment, deprivation, exploitation and the seeds of revolutionary politics, with irony, eclectic influences informed by European New Wave and Third Cinema, and a powerful Marxist lens. Shaped like a multi-act piece, the second film in his magnificent ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – bookended by Interview and Padatik – was as ferociously political and biting in its social observations as it was dazzling in its blend of formal choices, narrative devices and cinematic styles ranging from classical to experimental. Following an arresting montage, The droll prologue – in the veins of farcical political satire – finds the protagonist from the previous film (Ranjit Mallick) facing an absurdist trial for having exhibited anti-capitalist angst by defiling a mannequin, and featured a hilarious anti-proletarian war waged by the bourgeoisie. That segued into four thematically-linked episodes (adapted from stories by Manik Bandopadhyay, Probodh Sanyal, Samaresh Basu and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay) – a destitute family in the 1930s who’re forced to seek an alternative shelter from incessant rains; a family forced to meet ends through prostitution, while struggling to maintain middle-class respectability, during the 1943 famine; a group of rebellious teenagers smuggling rice by train, braving righteous cops and overbearing middle-class men; and a cocktail party filled with self-centred wealthy humbugs. The first three were made in the neorealist tradition, while the fourth was a quintessential Felliniesque parody. The film ended with a scorching agitprop epilogue where a young Naxal revolutionary, killed by the cops, holding the audience to account. The ensemble cast included Utpal Dutt as a sneering prosecutor, Haradhan Bandopadhyay as an irate judge, Madhabi Mukherjee as a troubled working woman, and Ajitesh Bandopadhyay as a pompous hypocrite.

p.s. This is a revisit.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Satire/Black Comedy/Omnibus Film/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Interview [1971]

 Mrinal Sen made a fabulous entry into radical political cinema – blending plucky insouciance, subversive wit and searing angst – with Interview. It, in turn, laid the foundations for his blazing ‘Calcutta Trilogy’ – which also comprised of the scorching Calcutta 71 and the scintillating Padatik – and demonstrated his love for counterpointing Marxist discourse and dissent with formal bravura and postmodernist playfulness. The slice-of-life dusk-to-dawn premise is centred on the titular interview. A young, personable, middle-class guy (Ranjit Mallick) – eager to ascend the social ladder – has landed an opportunity for a lucrative job at a foreign corporation, thanks to his uncle. All he must do is arrive in a dapper Western suit. His plans, unfortunately, go haywire, as his only suit is in a laundry which is shut on account of a flash labour strike, and thereafter for being unable to remain insular in a crowded bus. The only option left to him, ultimately, is to arrive at the prized interview in a scandalously inappropriate attire. The film, interestingly, began with the dismantling of a statue representing colonial past and culminated with the disrobing of a mannequin embodying consumerist present, whilst the tone transitioned from wry and amusing for most parts to seething fury at the end. Around the one-third mark, the protagonist dramatically breaks the fourth wall while traveling in a tramcar, and sheepishly informs that he’s an actor being followed by a movie camera, his onscreen mother is played by Karuna Bannerjee (Pather Panchali’s Sarbojaya), and his story is real despite the artifice. This Brechtian departures, combined with satirical liveliness and ingenious use of street photographs and footage (shot by Sen himself), made it a work of impish, idiosyncratic audacity.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Drama/Political Satire/Experimental Film

Language: Bengali

Country: India

Bhuvan Shome [1969]

 Mrinal Sen’s first Hindi film, Bhuvan Shome, came at an intriguing juncture. While he’d already made 8 features – including the delightfully roguish romcom Akash Kusum – he was still a year away from transitioning into an emphatically political filmmaker. This seriocomic ‘slice of life’ tapestry – which he adapted in an understated deadpan vein from a story by the pseudonymous Bengali novelist “Banaphool” – nevertheless amply demonstrated his burgeoning love for formal playfulness, from jump cuts, freeze frames and animated doodles to whimsical episodes, wry internal monologues and sardonic narrations (by Amitabh Bachchan in his first movie credit). Incidentally, Satyajit Ray, who’d derisively summarized it as “Big Bad Bureaucrat Reformed by Rustic Belle” – his seven-word synopsis, though, was inch-perfect – may’ve been influenced by it to an extent when he made his first Hindi feature 8 years later, viz. the deliciously satiric period film Shatranj Ke Khiladi. The eponymous Mr. Shome (Utpal Dutt), a high-ranking Bengali civil servant and middle-aged widower – is an incorrigibly proud and uncompromising stickler for rules. Growing mid-life existential crisis leads him to a “hunting holiday” – in a farcical attempt to cure loneliness with adventure – and finds himself in an isolated terrain in rural Gujarat. At the end of an absurdist last-mile bullock cart ride, he’s inadvertently acquainted with Gauri (Suhasini Muley), a lively, unambiguous and friendly village girl who helps the gauche Shome, clearly a fish out of water, while also reforming him without really meaning to. During his bumbling expedition, Gauri’s vivacious charm and nonconformist views end up striking a deep chord within him – probably falling in love with her too – and he finds himself a light-hearted and uncharacteristically forgiving man upon his return to the city.

Director: Mrinal Sen

Genre: Comedy/Social Satire/Adventure

Language: Hindi

Country: India

A Leap in the Dark [1980]

 The complex, sordid and unsettling dynamics of a family bordering on catastrophic, self-destructive dysfunction in A Leap in the Dark, and its bristling disdain for bourgeois morality and hypocrisies, sharply mirrored Marco Bellocchio’s stunning debut feature Fists in the Pocket from two decades back. The striking expressionism and formal audacity of the latter were replaced with a more controlled ferocity and muted visual palette here; the filmmaker’s radical and subversive lens, and his script’s gleeful grotesquerie and dark irony, however, hadn’t clearly mellowed in these preceding years, despite the evolution in his authorial voice. The film’s two central characters – Mauro (Michel Piccoli), a middle-aged bachelor and wealthy judge filled with complex neuroses, insecurities and repressed childhood memories, and Marta (Anouk Aimée), his similarly middle-aged and unmarried elder sister, who’s plagued with mental health afflictions and recurrent suicidal impulses – have been living together for many years in their sprawling and decadent apartment in Rome. Mauro’s intense possessiveness of and continuous obsession with his beautiful and fragile sister added disconcerting incestuous undertones to their relationship, as well as indications of underlying madness which will become increasingly revealed as Marta’s insanity subsides. This ironic switchover is precipitated by Giovanni (Michele Placido), a young anarchic actor in underground theatre and with delinquent tendencies, who Mauro introduces Marta to in order to push her over the edge, but becomes fiercely jealous of when he finds them developing a sensual relationship leading to improvements in her disposition. Piccoli was devastatingly brilliant, while Aimée and Placido were excellent too, as the non-conjugal couple’s cocooned, meticulously organized and oppressively sedate lives – and in a manic and blazing climactic sequence, their apartment too – experience a complete meltdown.

Director: Marco Bellocchio

Genre: Drama/Black Comedy/Family Drama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy