The Other Lamb (2019)
This week’s releases include classic Italian art house from the ‘70s, contemporary psychological horror and a family crime drama in the Caribbean.
L’Innocente (Film Movement)
Gabriel D’Annunzio was the only man who told Mussolini to shut up—and lived to tell about it. D’Annunzio was part of Italy’s Futurist avant-garde; he was a bomber pilot in World War I and afterward raised a private army in black shirts that seized the Adriatic port of Trieste. Mussolini was a big fan.
D’Annunzio was also a bestselling novelist. His L’Innocente was adapted into a period film with Merchant-Ivory opulence by director Luchino Visconti. The 1976 film is artful melodrama that yanks at the heart while engaging the mind. The setting is the aristocracy of fin de siècle Italy. The steamy love story asks enduring questions. When love fades, are friendship, common interests and even mutual affection enough to sustain a marriage? When do we cease to live and merely exist? And why do men raise women up with one hand while pulling them down with the other?
The Other Lamb (IFC Midnight)
The young girls playing in the woods are wearing identical hairdos and homespun garb. They were born into a cult that traded civilization for isolation. Their “Shepherd” is a charismatic man with hypnotic eyes and his flock is composed of “Wives” and “Daughters” (lack of sons strikes an ominous note). Composed with a painterly eye, Malgorzata Szumowska's
The Other Lamb (2019) dramatizes the danger of faith in emotionally manipulative false prophets preying on damaged lives.
Haven (MVD)
The film stops to make an aside: until the 1970s, Grand Cayman was a Caribbean paradise. Nowadays it’s awash in violence, illegal drugs and money laundering. The corrupt backdrop well suits the story of a Miami high roller (Bill Paxton) who flees to island with his daughter Pippa (Agnes Bruckner) steps ahead of federal investigators. She falls in love a charming local hustler. Haven is directed by Caymanian Frank E. Flowers and filmed on location.
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