Aftersun [2022]

 Scottish director Charlotte Wells’ assured debut film Aftersun is an achingly tender portrayal of memories – which can be alternately wistful, melancholic and slippery – along with gaps, overlapping recollections, ambiguities and haziness that either become more gaping with time or attain new clarity through a mix of realizations and reimagining. Interestingly, unlike filmmakers who’ve dealt on this subject with complex thematic explorations, ambitious structures, formal bravura and powerful political contexts – Tarkovsky, Fellini, Ghatak, Angelopoulos, Marker, Resnais, Akerman, Mekas, Hou, Lynch, Guzmán, etc. – Wells’ approach was disarmingly simple, her canvas decidedly small and her touch delicately low-key. It portrayed a short summer vacation to Turkey, as part of a budget tour package, taken by eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) – shy, vivacious, and surprisingly matured and perceptive for her age – with her genial and oddball 30-year-old dad Calum (Paul Mescal), who’s divorced from her mother even though they continue to maintain cordial relations, whose boyish looks lead some to assume that he’s Sophie’s elder brother, and has an easy-going camaraderie with her. As we gradually decipher – through fragmentary impressions, and Wells’ gentle brushstrokes and quiet observational style – Calum has a history of drug abuse, he’s grappling with depression, he’s carrying a crushing guilt which he’s unable to figure out, and he’s struggling with existential anguish that’s barely cloaked by his placid demeanour. Their seemingly uneventful time together – making home videos using a camcorder, having light-hearted fun, lazing around, playing arcade games, etc., and beautifully brought to life by Corio and Mescal – achieved additional depths through the prism of memories as Sophie, who’s now in her thirties herself, with a wife and kid, is essentially trying to gain fresh understandings on her “lost” father.

Director: Charlotte Wells

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Coming-of-Age

Language: English

Country: UK

Esterno Notte [2022]

 In March 1978, former Italian PM and Christian Democracy party leader Aldo Moro was kidnapped, held hostage for 55 days and eventually assassinated by the revolutionary guerilla outfit Red Brigades. The centre-left politician was an influential statesman and popular leader whose sway cut across the political spectrum; “Caso Moro”, as a result, remains one of the most dramatic and defining moments in post-War Italy. Bellocchio, who’d made the acclaimed film Buongiorno, Notte on the same event – albeit from the perspective of an RB member – returned to this subject 20 years later with Esterno Notte, where he significantly expanded the scope by focusing on all key protagonists and therefore resorting to the miniseries form which allows for more expansive treatments while retaining the narrative elements and cinematic appeal of feature-length films. The resultant work, split over 6 Parts, was ambitious, kaleidoscopic and oftentimes compelling. The first 5 episodes spotlighted on each of the key players – Part 1 on Moro (Fabrizio Gifuni) himself; Part 2 on conflicted Minister of the Interior Cossiga (Fausto Russo Alesi); Part 3 on Pope Paul VI (Toni Servillo) who launched a parallel plan to get Moro freed upon realizing the government’s unwillingness to negotiate; Part 4 on RB and, in particular, Adriana Faranda (Daniela Marra), a single mother and committed revolutionary who was part of the core team and expressed disagreements with their pig-headed tactical choices; Part 5 on Moro’s wife Eleonora (Margherita Buy) who becomes increasingly furious at the CD leadership for their wilful inaction – while the final episode wrapped things up. Gifuni, as Moro, and Buy, as his devastated wife, gave superlative turns in this brooding docufiction on political conflicts, cover-ups, violence and aftermaths.

Director: Mario Bellocchio

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Docufiction/TV Miniseries

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Trenque Lauquen [2022]

 There’s something inherently haunting and melancholic about films, books and songs – Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mohiner Ghoraguli’s Sei Fuler Daal, Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, Chang-dong’s Burning – in which a girl disappears for no discernible reasons and is never found again. Trenque Lauquen – directed by Laura Citarella, who’d produced Llinás staggering masterwork La Flor, and part of the Argentine filmmaking collective El Pampero Cine which Llinás, as well as actress and co-writer Laura Paredes, are also members of – is a bewitching addition to that list. This shape-shifting work – clocking at a staggering 4 ½ hours, cheekily structured in the form of nested flashbacks like Matryoshka dolls, and filled with playful red herrings and tantalizing MacGuffins – both tests and rewards patience. Three investigations were at its core, all of which began in media res and faded off enigmatically. The search for Laura (Laura Paredes) – botanist, amateur historian, part-time radio jockey – by her older boyfriend Rafael (Rafael Spregelburd), and Ezequiel (Ezequiel Pierri), with whom she’d developed an intimate friendship, upon her sudden disappearance, formed this episodic yarn’s central focus. Two curious quests that Laura was drawn into before she fell off the grid, were thereafter chronicled through intricate flashbacks. The first one involved piecing together a racy, intercontinental, epistolary affair; the way she locates old letters using teasing clues reminded me a lot of the gorgeous novel The Tango Singer – another sublime Borgesian work – where the narrator hopes to locate an obscure, evasive tango singer. The second one featured a strange woman (Verónica Llinás) who’s trying to find a rare flower and potentially hiding a fantastical boy. The futile quest for answers, therefore, formed an alluring motif in this delightful postmodernist opus.

Director: Laura Citarella

Genre: Drama/Mystery

Language: Spanish

Country: Argentina

Tori and Lokita [2022]

 Stark tales of illegal refugees – who suffer harrowing conditions, exploitation and apathy as the going rate for hopes of a marginally better life – have been a recurring motif in the Dardenne brothers’ canon. In La Promesse and The Unknown Girl the immigrants existed on the edges, even if their experiences and stories were eloquently and powerfully evoked. In Lorna’s Silence, however, they took the centre-stage, thus amplifying the associated desperation, dehumanization and despair. Tori and Lokita had strong parallels with the latter film in that sense, despite the outward differences – focus on an African kid and adolescent, instead of adults from a “lesser” Europe, and replacement of marital relationship with a found family which, in-sync with the Dardennes’ universe, demonstrated a deep and heart-warming bond. The titular characters are eleven-year-old Tori (Pablo Schils) and sixteen-year-old Lokita (Mbundu Joely) who’ve made the arduous journey from Benin to Belgium only to find themselves ghettoized in a vicious quagmire thanks to jaded immigration authorities that’re reluctant to extend residence permit to Lokita – the two, having developed profound attachment to each other, have positioned themselves as siblings to the cynical authorities – which, in turn, has made them tragically vulnerable to the traffickers chasing them for payments, and a drug racket run by a chef (Alban Ukaj) – in order to pay their mounting debts – who uses them as mules and sexually abuses Lokita. The film’s rare moments of levity – the inseparable duo practicing ways of cracking the immigration interviews or performing a Sicilian song for tourists – were fleeting asides in an otherwise relentlessly bleak, suffocating and downbeat work that, despite being a relatively lesser Dardenne, was undeniable in its painful cry and social urgency.

Directors: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: French

Country: Belgium

Argentina, 1985 [2022]

 Argentina was no different vis-à-vis most other South/Central American countries when it came to experiencing repressive right-wing dictatorships during the 20^th century (usually helmed by military junta, oftentimes sponsored/aided by the US, and always supported by the upper/middle classes and social/political conservatives) – though, the one it faced from 1976 to 1983, was especially ghastly –; however, in what made it a relative rarity, it tried the perpetrators in a civilian court of law, and that too very soon after the armed forces relinquished its illegitimate powers, which meant that the scorching memories of the state-sponsored violence were still fresh. Argentina, 1985 – reminiscent of Larraín’s No, in how both films vividly evoked momentous events through straight-up storytelling laced with thematic seriousness and stylistic levity, and Guzmán’s The Pinochet Case in highlighting dogged lawyers who dared to bring criminal state heads to account – chronicled the ‘Trial of the Juntas’. The film’s two primary protagonists were the middle-aged public prosecutor Julio César Strassera (Ricardo Darín), and his fiercely committed deputy Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani), who – along with a group of idealistic assistants and defying threats to their personal well-being – led the high-profile trial against Jorge Videla and his top-level cohorts, in defiance of collaborators, apologists, careerists and fanatics. But its protagonists, in equal measures, were also those who courageously took the stands and recounted their gut-wrenching stories of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, custodial rapes and torture, including the human rights activist Adriana Calvo (Laura Paredes), among many others. While the film’s glossy treatment and attempts at wry humour felt distracting at times, the solemnity of its matter which was addressed head-on, aided by committed performances, made it an undeniably necessary work.

Director: Santiago Mitre

Genre: Drama/Legal Drama/Historical Drama

Language: Spanish

Country: Argentina

Joyland [2022]

 Biba – the vivacious transwoman in Joyland who refuses to be stripped off her agency despite an existence marked by scorn and marginalization, and played with stunning élan by Alina Khan – immediately reminded me of similarly unforgettable transwomen characters in Lemebel’s My Tender Matador, Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Shree’s Tomb of Sand, who too possessed unbridled verve, gall and gumption. She was one of several people here who let loose a riot of desires in reckless abandon. The way gender boundaries, sexual stereotypes, patriarchal structures and heteronormative identities were subverted in this magnificent feature debut by Saim Sadiq, therefore, was exhilarating! That it was also laced with such tenderness, profound intimacy, existential malaise and bursts of rebellious joy, was as indicative of its narrative aplomb as its radical humanism. The film’s tapestry was weaved around the middle-class Rana family residing amidst the bustle of Lahore – the wheelchair-bound patriarch (Salmaan Peerzada) who’s unabashedly conservative, yet has developed an attachment with a widowed woman; his elder daughter-in-law Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani) who manages all domestic duties and keeps giving birth in the hopes of begetting a male heir, while surreptitiously smoking on the roof and lashing out when offended; Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq), the younger daughter-in-law, who’s fiercely protective of her financial independence, hates conventional gender roles, and succumbs to furtive impulses; and Mumtaz’s unassuming husband Haider (Ali Junejo), who happily helps with household chores and becomes hopelessly enamoured with Biba upon secretly joining a risqué dance theatre. The latter affair was memorably counterpointed with the rapturous friendship that develops between Nucchi and Mumtaz. All three were magnificently enacted in this gorgeously cinematographed work filled with impudence, vitality, melancholy and desolation.

Director: Saim Sadiq

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama/Family Drama/Existential Drama

Language: Urdu/Punjabi

Country: Pakistan

Alcarràs [2022]

 Alcarràs was a decidedly political film, even when it wasn’t ostensibly so. Its embodiment of this curious dichotomy – between its themes vis-à-vis form – made it a particularly interesting work. It focussed on a closely-knit agricultural family’s last harvest before eviction from the peach orchard in rural Catalonia that they’ve tilled for generations – and the repercussions thereof, as it isn’t just their only livelihood, but raison d'être as well – because their landlord, refusing to honour the handshake agreement made by his deceased father, wants to raze it down and setup a lucrative solar farm in its place. Carla Simón, in an admirable artistic choice, gave space to every member of the Solé clan in the first film in Catalan language to win the Golden Bear – Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), the increasingly grumpy middle-aged patriarch who leads the backbreaking harvest; his strong-willed wife who helps him on the farm while also managing domestic chores; their gangly, impulsive adolescent son (Albert Bosch), emotionally confused pre-teen daughter, and carefree, lovable little Iris (Iris (Ainet Jounou); the reserved, downcast grandpa (Josep Abad), and adorable grandma who loves reminiscing; and Quimet’s proud sister, frivolous brother-in-law and their chirpy twin kids who they’re all very close to – through their tribulations and joys, conflicts and camaraderie, falling-out and solidarity. The film, on one hand, was organically interwoven with such topics as fading memories of the Spanish Civil where Catalonia had played a revolutionary role, the advent of green capitalism, the exploitation of farmers by market forces, and use of low-cost migrant labour; while, on the other, it was awash in lyrical naturalism, bittersweet tones, luminous landscapes, quirky moments and the melancholic passage of a way of life.

Director: Carla Simon

Genre: Drama/Rural Drama/Family Drama

Language: Catalan

Country: Spain

Dry Ground Burning [2022]

 Dry Ground Burning, as the title indicated, was scorched, grimy and incendiary, and – as a ferociously feminist, bleakly dystopian and boldly political film; cinema of resistance; an exercise in agitprop; grungy, revisionist Western; speculative thriller; “ethnographic sci-fi”; and a work of docufiction – operated, with formal suppleness, in the shifting intersection of multiple genres. It simultaneously captured Bolsenaro’s toxic, right-wing politics, and evoked a nightmarish “what-if” scenario wherein the country has devolved into a post-apocalyptic police state and carceral society, leading to underground dissidents defiantly seizing pockets of control. And what a brash defiance it was! An all-female collective of outlaws and residents of the impoverished Sol Nascente favela in the outskirts of Brasilia – comprising of Chitarra (Joana Darc Furtado), a single mother and the voluptuous leader of the gasolinheiras; her nonchalant half-sister Léa (Léa Alves da Silva), who’s recently been released from jail; and Andreia (Andreia Vieira), who’s founded the Prison People Party with the aim to provide voice and empowerment to people, especially women, who continue to face terrible discrimination and impediments on account of past incarcerations – have taken control of an underground pipeline from which they extract crude gasoline, refine it into oil and sell that to a motorcycle gang for distribution. The film’s three gangsta protagonists – whose lives, in a blurring of boundaries, mirrored that of the respective actors –, therefore, formed a fearless vanguard and represented a proud future that “isn’t just female: it is Black, lesbian, profoundly matriarchal.” Its most scintillating moments included Andreia’s rap-canvassing of her political manifesto, and a hypnotic pan within a Bolsenaro rally where the crowd of smug conservatives was the very antithesis of this film and its three heroines.

Director: Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queiros

Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi/Revisionist Western/Crime Drama

Language: Portuguese

Country: Brazil

Everything Everywhere All at Once [2022]

 Everything Everywhere All at Once, the unlikely smash hit by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, a.k.a. ‘The Daniels’, was clearly a film of two halves. The first half, which transitioned from a grimy, grubby, and immediately identifiable immigrant story – filled with anxieties, stresses, feelings of otherization, futile attempts at assimilation and generational fault-lines that deftly articulated the lost dreams, and was complemented by low-fi, grainy realism that had “indie” written all over it – into a wacky, gonzo, stylistically dazzling, absurdist, gleefully farcical and unapologetically over-the-top sci-fi action comedy – that subverted genre trappings while freely jumping across alternate realities, parallel universes, and the lines between deadpan realism and unrestrained fantasies – was like a breath of fresh air. The way it meta-referenced kung-fu movies, red pill / blue pill duality, wuxia fight choreography, etc., while retaining an underlying layer of melancholy, was captivating. “Poignant maximalism”, as one reviewer coined it, was apt in this context. The second half, unfortunately, undid some of its goofy brilliance, as it became increasingly maudlin, resorted to literal philosophizing, took up one concept too many in its attempt at irreverence, and, at some point, overlong. The film’s storyline was centred on Evelyn (a truly terrific and inspired Michelle Yoeh) – a harried, embittered, middle-aged Chinese-American woman whose marriage to her meek husband (Ke Huy Quan in an endearing turn) is falling apart, relationship with their daughter (Stephanie Hsu) has estranged, the struggling laundromat that she runs is struggling with tax complications thanks to an exacting IRS inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis) and stuck in escapable existential rut – who must tap into spectacular alternate selves – action star, cook and whatnot – in order to save the world, err, the universe(s).

Director: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert

Genre: Comedy Drama/Action/Sci-Fi/Martial Arts Film/Adventure

Language: English, Cantonese

Country: US

One Fine Morning (Un Beau Matin) [2022]

 Mia Hansen-Løve is that rare filmmaker who can effortlessly portray a volley of emotions, existential crises & lived experiences using precise and tender brushstrokes, with shades that're vivid yet understated, and on a canvas that's as fragile as an old notebook, thus capturing poetry within a raindrop that’s both delicate and mundane. One Fine Morning elucidated these sublime attributes of hers as a filmmaker. That, like Father of My Children, this too was based on actual people – her own parents – informed it with profoundly personal meanings. It centred on Sandra, a fiercely real character, played with astounding depth and stunning restraint by the magnetic Léa Seydoux. She’s a widowed single mother who stays with her little daughter; she’s committed to her vocation as an interpreter and translator; she deeply cares for her aged father Georg (an emphatically brilliant Pascal Greggory), former philosophy professor, who’s suffering from a debilitating neurodegenerative disease that’s left him utterly helpless; she embarks on a passionate affair with an old married friend (Melvil Poupaud); she’s also well-connected with her quirky mom Nicole (Nicole Garcia) – a left-wing activist who still attends to Georg despite being his ex-wife – and her sister, as they fervently explore ways to admit Georg to an agreeable nursing home while also taking care of his rich collection of eclectic books in a manner that befits their memories of his now-fading identity. Lush, vibrant photography of Parisian streets and the constant narrative motion complemented the film’s nuanced interiority, while Jan Johansson’s magnificent Liksom en Herdinna and Schubert’s sonatas amplified its wistful, melancholic tones. Coping with loss – both past and imminent – while carrying on with a gloriously messy life, therefore, formed its simmering motif.

Director: Mia Hansen-Love

Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Romantic Drama/Urban Drama

Language: French

Country: France

My Imaginary Country [2022]

 Who could’ve imagined that an increase in Santiago’s metro fare by 30 pesos in October 2019 would spark such a massive social outburst that it’d eventually lead to the drafting of a new constitution and election of an avowedly leftist leader for the first time since Allende. That fare increase was essentially the final straw that brought millions to the streets to protest against societal malaise and neo-liberal policies of post-Pinochet governments – under-funded education, housing and healthcare; lack of employment and fair wages; perpetuation of patriarchy and sexual violence; under-representation of women and indigenous people in the government; disproportionate power of the police and military – which they did despite lack of a centralized leadership, and in stunning defiance of the violence unleashed by the authorities. This transformative event – captured by Guzmán in his pulsating, politically urgent, eloquently persuasive and powerful reportage My Imaginary Country – therefore, signified the coming of full circle for Chile, and its most impassioned and outstanding documentarian for around 50 years. Two fascinating choices made this, respectively, an essential work and a scintillating watch – viz. its stirring feminist voice, as all its talking heads – activists, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, medics, cultural collectives, etc. – were avowedly progressive women; and, alongside riveting B/W images and “live” street footage, Guzmán made thrilling use of drones wherein two sequences especially stood out – an armoured vehicle spraying teargas on demonstrators while coasting through an avenue, and throbbing crowds packing Santiago’s Plaza Italia. In an ironic touch, Estadio Nacional, which’d once served as a detention, torture and execution centre upon the 1973 military coup – the filmmaker had himself been imprisoned in it – was the venue for the 2020 plebiscite for a new constitution.

Director: Patricio Guzman

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Political History

Language: Spanish

Country: Chile

All That Breathes [2022]

 Shaunak Sen, while speaking of the driving force behind his terrific documentary All That Breathes, articulated his eagerness to “touch upon the whole through the particular”, and this parallel embracing of seemingly dichotomous facets made it an especially powerful work. It was both an example of transcendental art and electrifying reportage; an unsettling portrayal of urban dystopia, while also a quietly uplifting piece; as much an expression of profound humanism as of political dissent and defiance; universal and timeless in its broader philosophies, while also extraordinarily “in the moment” in its geographic and contextual specificities; simultaneously muted in its tone, eloquent in its fierce social commentary, and pulsating in its tremendous sense of vitality and urgency. Its primary subjects were two soft-spoken Muslim brothers – Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad – residing in a desolate section of Delhi, who rescue and treat birds – predominantly the majestic black kites – at their cramped home turned makeshift clinic, despite financially and procedural hurdles. Its subject was also the city of Delhi, with its smog-filled skies and grim ecological footprint, alongside its stunning culture of resistance and troubling social fault-lines that’re demonstrated, respectively, by the massive protests that the draconian citizenship laws sparked and the venomous riots that those in positions of power engineered. And, not least, its subject was a nation-state’s irrevocable turn towards muscular majoritarianism and smug xenophobia, wherein the kites – which’re treated as outcasts by veterinary facilities for being a “non-vegetarian” species – become representative of the broader political canvas, thus paving way for touching “the whole through the particular”. While speaking of the film’s haunting portrayals, complex themes and contrapuntal manifestations, one is also transfixed by its hypnotic and rapturous audio-visual compositions.

Director: Shaunak Sen

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Hindi

Country: India

The Headless Woman [2008]

 Lucrecia Martel’s magnificent ‘Salta Trilogy’, over the course of the films that it comprised of, transitioned from the broad to the particular in their narrative focus – starting with the rapturously dizzying La Ciénaga which encompassed an array of extended relatives, followed by the wickedly provocative The Holy Girl which covered a smaller family, and finally the psychologically chilling, haunting and deeply unnerving The Headless Woman which largely centred on one character. Formal audacity – avoidance of establishing shots that compels viewers to situate characters and discern relationships themselves, complex audio-visual compositions, deliciously elliptical narratives, etc. –, feminist gaze, and caustic political critiques that’ve informed her works, were fiercely exhibited in this oblique hit-and-run tale and its discomfiting aftermaths. The said incident happens when Verónica (María Onetto, in a superb, nuanced performance) – a wealthy, middle-aged dentist whose class privilege is discernible through her coiffured blond hair, chic sunglasses, assured body language, and politely distanced and condescending interactions with native servants and workers – inadvertently hits something… or someone, while driving along a country road. She gets into an incredibly dazed and disoriented state, and, thereafter, starts thinking that she may have killed an Indian boy – the dog in the rear-view mirror potentially indicative of her subjective perspective – which her husband, lover and friends are keen to convince her otherwise, forget and bury. The way she ultimately shook herself out of her stupor – and guilt – was especially shattering. The film, therefore, served as a stunning – albeit, allegorical – indictment of the Argentine bourgeoisie’s clinical self-preservation and all-too-eager disavowal of the estimated 30,000 who were disappeared during the military dictatorship, and how they so easily expunged themselves of guilt and moral culpability through wilful denial.

p.s. My earlier review of the film can be found here.

Director: Lucrecia Martel

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: Spanish

Country: Argentina

The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa) [2004]

 If Lucrecia Martel’s stunning debut feature La Ciénaga – with its intoxicating cocktail of chaos, malaise, torpor, vacuousness, fault-lines and undercurrents – was a dazzling piece of diamond, her sophomore feature The Holy Girl – the middle instalment in her masterful ‘Salta Trilogy’, and followed by the magnificent The Headless Woman – was like a cold, metallic razor that clinically sliced through the skin. This brilliant, cutting, provocative, unsettling, sensuous and languid work – which’re Martel’s authorial signatures – focused with wry detachment on how religious frenzy and sexual curiosity can feed into each other for a young, naïve and intensely conflicted teenager. The film’s lurid and devilish subject bore Almodóvar’s influence – he was, incidentally, the film’s executive producer – but this was Martel’s film through and through, with its ambivalent gestures, tonal ambiguities, narrative restraint, unhurried style, flirtatious compositions, and leaving things open to extrapolations. It kickstarted when a middle-aged man takes advantage of a crowd to casually press his groin against a teenage girl, in what is clearly a secret sexual perversion for him. The man happens to be Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso), a respected and married physician, who’s attending a medical congress at an impressive hotel, and during which time he finds himself getting drawn to Helena (Mercedes Morán), the hotel’s striking owner and a divorcee in a state of emotional dilemmas. And the girl is Amalia (María Alché), a paradoxical, mischievous and pubescent teenager who’s become enamoured by Catholic faith, experiments on her burgeoning sexuality with her friend (Julieta Zylberberg) and starts stalking Jano to cure him of his sins. She, coincidentally, also happens to be Amalia’s daughter, and the ensuing ménage à trois is therefore bound to end badly for all.

Director: Lucrecia Martel

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Religious Drama

Language: Spanish

Country: Argentina

Le Cœur Fantôme (The Phantom Heart) [1996]

 Philippe Garrel’s filmography weren’t just delineated with remarkable formal, tonal, textural and compositional consistencies, it was often threaded with thematic commonalities too given how many of his films were laced with rich semi-autobiographical elements. His informally linked “Autobiographical Series” of five profoundly personal, understated and beautifully crafted gems – viz. L’Enfant Secret, Les Baisers de Secours, J’Entends plus la Guitare, Le Coeur Fantôme and Les Amants Réguliers – especially stood out in terms of their absorbing interpretations, reimagining, and manifestations of strands from his life through the prismatic lens of memory and cinema. The muted, introspective, and tender fourth film – the relatively least known work in that collage – portrayed personal, marital, romantic, and existential fragments of yet another brooding alter-ego of the filmmaker. Philippe (Luis Rego) is a middle-aged, soft-spoken, and moderately successful painter who moves out of the life and apartment he shares with his wife Annie (Évelyne Didi) – and their two kids who he deeply loves – after she reveals that she’s having an affair. While continuing to pursue with his painting at the small desolate space that he maintains, and casually indulging with a prostitute at times, he serendipitously meets the naïve and much younger Justine (Aurélia Alcaïs), and embarks on a tentative relationship with her. Philippe’s life, therefore, becomes delicately tied to the two women – the loving but possessive Justine, and Annie who seems to be falling apart and with whom his kids stay – while also spending time with his wry, garrulous and aged dad (played by the filmmaker’s real-life father, Maurice Garrel) who’s long separated from Philippe’s mother and is slipping towards oblivion. The film was shot in soft, washed-out colours that complemented its fragile, melancholic fabric.

Director: Philippe Garrel

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama/Marital Drama

Language: French

Country: France

Arabian Nights [1974]

 Arabian Nights – Pasolini’s concluding instalment in his audacious, expansive and uninhibited ‘Trilogy of Life’ – was an episodic anthology film that revelled in the joys of storytelling like The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, the two preceding films in this celebrated triptych on seminal medieval literature. It was even more ambitious in that he had to choose the stories from around a thousand Persian folk tales; filmed it in locations across Iran, Yemen, Nepal and Ethiopia; and conjured a highly intricate narrative web of nested interconnected stories, despite doing away with the iconic framing device featuring Scheherazade. It was, however, possibly the least political of the trio – the sole focus here being the celebration of sensuality in its myriad forms, devoid of restrictive modern-day prejudices –, and the wicked black humour of the earlier films was toned done while freely retaining the source collection’s fantastical nature. The central strand was on the passionate romance between and incredible parallel journeys of Nur-e-Din (Franco Merli), a naïve young guy, and Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini), a striking slave girl, while the remaining episodes – featuring dazzling locational backdrops and stories-within-stories – covered a spectacular range from impish and intimate to swashbuckling and violent. The one that deserves a special mention involved the impetuous Aziz (Ninetto Davoli) who abandons his bride-to-be Aziza – who, nevertheless, helps him out of selfless love and dies of heartbreak – upon being smitten by a mysterious, bewitching woman. That Davoli had recently broken off his relationship with Pasolini in order to marry a woman, provided a deep personal allegory for the filmmaker. The ignominious fate that Aziz eventually faced at the hands of his hedonistic pursuit, consequently, served as a sardonic cinematic schadenfreude.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Comedy/Romantic Comedy/Drama/Fantasy/Anthology Film

Language: Italian/Arabian

Country: Italy

The Canterbury Tales [1972]

 Based on Geoffrey Chaucher’s influential Middle English epic, The Canterbury Tales was Pasolini’s ecstatic and flamboyantly crafted second chapter – positioned between The Decameron and Arabian Nights – in his episodic, iconoclastic and spectacularly boundary-pushing Trilogy of Life. It wasn’t just more luscious and hyperbolic than its predecessor, but also more exultantly unhinged – being unabashedly peppered with graphic carnality and scatological humour – and expressed an even darker world-view. However, while it did manifest rebellious political overtones – in its lashing indictment of organized religion with its unfettered bigotry and hypocrisy; odious depictions of feudal lords and wealthy profit-mongers with their unbridled greed and pomposity; and continued affront towards bourgeois morality – it was, arguably, not as consistently and radically political as the trilogy’s masterful opening salvo. The classic’s frame story was retained here wherein eight tales are narrated by traveling pilgrims and chronicled by a smirking Chaucer (played by Pasolini) – a hideous and obnoxious elderly merchant who becomes blind upon marrying a bored, much younger woman (Josephine Chaplin) who’s aroused by a secret admirer; the violence with which the church punishes sodomy, and the befriending of the devil by a ruthless civil servant; a Chaplin-esque scoundrel (Ninetto Davoli) who lives dangerously and dies nonchalantly by offending everyone; the wooing of an unfulfilled married woman by two young lotharios; an insatiable middle-aged woman who seduces a young academic; two guileless students who exact sweet, salacious revenge against a sly middle-aged miller; three crass buddies who’re tricked by a world-weary old man into becoming murderous beasts; an avaricious monk who gets a glimpse of hell. The last tale, in fact, portrayed arguably the most gleefully grotesque, hilariously offensive and uninhibitedly outrageous cinematic rendition of hell.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Religious Satire/Anthology Film

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

The Decameron [1971]

 Unapologetically ribald, wickedly subversive, gleefully scandalous and vivaciously realized, The Decameron – Pasolini’s extraordinary adaptation of Boccaccio’s mammoth 14^th century volume, and the first chapter in his ‘Trilogy of Life’, followed by The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights – was also a profoundly political work. The towering Italian giant – whose avowed Marxism, staggering intellect, homosexuality and insouciant non-conformism made him a trailblazer for many but an anathema to reactionary conservatives – crafted a radical interpretation of the landmark Italian text. He did away with the framing device, chose 10 (out of the 100) stories that appealed to him the most; and gave them a stunning class spin by stripping them of royalty, transplanting them from Florence to Naples which served as a microcosm for the global south within Italy, and scripted it in the Neapolitan dialect. And he furthered these facets by packing it with bawdy humour, provocative sexuality, delirious subversion of organized religion, and deromanticized depiction of the Renaissance-era, laced with gold-digging, backstabbing, promiscuity, hypocrisy and violence. The fabulist, interweaving, vividly composed and thoroughly amoral tales included a swindled guy who joins hands with gravediggers; a deaf-mute simpleton who entices an entire convent of lascivious nuns; a wife’s adultery under the nose of her cuckolded husband; a merchant who lies his way to sainthood despite a life devoted to grotesquerie; the great Giotto’s pupil (played by Pasolini himself) who’s come to paint frescoes in a small church; a young couple whose first libidinous tryst gets spectacularly outed; a coy girl’s unsettling preservation of her murdered boyfriend; a respectable man who takes lewd advantage of a poor gullible couple; and a heavenly pact made between a pious man and his philanderer buddy.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Religious Satire/Anthology Film

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

Simon of the Desert [1965]

Simon of the Desert – considered part of his extraordinary “Alatriste/Pinal trilogy” along with Viridiana and The Exterminating Angel, as well as his admired “Religious trilogy” along with Nazarín and The Milky Way – was the final film that Buñuel made in Mexico, as well as his final collaboration with Silvia Pinal, her then producer-husband Gustavo Alatriste, and Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Curtailed ostensibly on account of production and financial woes, this gleefully wicked interpretation of Saint Simeon Stylites’ self-imposed life atop a pillar in the middle of a desert seeking penance, provided a spare and droll demonstration of classic “Buñuelian” elements for its striking use of surrealism and its cutting satire on blind faith, harsh self-flagellation and rigid dogmatism that organized religion both peddles and champions. Simón (Claudio Brook) experiences “professional advancement” even in a life of extreme self-denial such as this, wherein, after spending six years, six weeks and six days on a 10-feet pillar, he moves to a significantly taller one erected by a wealthy patron; attains both celebrityhood and scorn among monks and commoners for his ascetism; performs an off-hand miracle which, ironically, doesn’t lead to any brouhaha; and engages in wryly comical battles with a sly, indefatigable and chameleon-like Satan (Pinal) who manifests in multiple forms – as a coquettish seductress, in the ruse of god, etc. – in order to break his absurd abnegation. In the film’s terrific and thoroughly insane finale, Simón is teleported by Satan to a swinging rock 'n' roll nightclub in modern-day New York City, amidst a frenzied crowd indulging in “radioactive flesh” – in a wry reference to the Cold War nuclear arms race and “Mutually Assured Destruction” – against a pulsating live music.

Director: Luis Bunuel

Genre: Black Comedy/Religious Satire/Surrealist Movie

Language: Spanish

Country: Mexico

Honeycomb [1969]

 The third chapter in Saura’s delicious and delirious ‘Bourgeois Trilogy’ – preceded by the brooding and magnificent Peppermint Frappe, and the stark and tense Stress Is Three – was a sensational exercise in absurdism, and a lacerating satire on the bourgeoisie – their social insularity, vacuous existences, class privilege and moral quagmire, that’re allegorically manifested through subversion of the sanctimonious institution of marriage – worthy of a top-drawer Buñuel. Through its progressively wild and unpredictable narrative arc – it began with an excellent, low-key single-take sequence that situated the viewers in the brutalist architecture of the exclusive villa where the film’s super-wealthy couple resides, to the bleak and shocking denouement – and an unhinged chronicle of marital toxicity that explodes into unfettered chaos and pulpy violence, it heralded a manic eruption of troubling memories, repressed obsessions, lurid fantasies and grotesque fetishes. When the ultra-staid ambiance, sterilized décor and rigid order within the modernist residence of the glum industrialist Pedro (Per Oscarsson) and his gleefully naïve wife Teresa (Geraldine Chaplin) – who possesses an anarchic streak despite having always lived in oppressive domesticity – are suddenly disturbed by the latter’s unsettling regression into her Catholic past, and the appearance of antique furniture in the household that’re antithetical and anachronistic to it, it ruptures the pair’s estranged marital dynamics and provokes them into indulging in a series of increasingly discomfiting, deranged, kinky and hysterical role-plays that’re bound to end on an ugly note for both, even if they’re spectacularly liberated out of their states of moribund stupor and existential decay in the process. Chaplin, who co-wrote the script with frequent Saura collaborator Rafael Azcona, gave an exhilarating turn as the volatile girl-woman who catalyses the couple’s mutually assured annihilation.

Director: Carlos Saura

Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Marital Satire

Language: Spanish

Country: Spain