Girls of the Sun (2019)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: The Reflecting Skin, Last Year at Marienbad, Girls of the Sun and Damned Summer.
The Reflecting Skin
In one of his first major roles, Viggo Mortensen plays a serviceman coming home to a rural country in 1950s Idaho. His mother is a lunatic, dad recently doused himself with gasoline and lit the match, and his kid brother thinks the strange, pale Englishwoman down the road is a vampire. The American gothic tale almost works, but what sticks to mind is the enveloping WPA atmosphere of lean-tos in an endless amber sea of grain.
Last Year at Marienbad
The guests at a posh hotel circle endlessly around the labyrinth of corridors, padding silently on deep carpets along the mirrored halls. Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is almost a horror movie populated by courteous zombies accompanied by a pipe organ score straight from Phantom of the Opera. Marienbad was one of the intellectual puzzles of ’60s European art house, but its legacy is less about its meaning than for its memorable images.
Girls of the Sun
Girls of the Sun places fictional characters in a brutally real setting: Iraqi Kurdistan in 2014 during the hardest months in the struggle to defeat the savagery of ISIS. Golshifteh Farahani (Patterson) stars as Bahar, leader of an all-female contingent of Kurdish fighters who escaped ISIS captivity and pursue the struggle for freedom with determined vengeance. Emmanuelle Bercot (Polisse) plays a French journalist drawn into the fight. The scenes of close combat are tensely drawn.
Damned Summer
Damned Summer (2018) catches the aimlessness of youth without meaningful goals. Shooting on virtually no budget with non-professionals, Portuguese director Pedro Cabeleira’s rambling style mirrors the lives at loose ends of his characters. Occasionally entrancing visual moments aside, Damned Summer often has the look of a deliberately composed home video as it wanders from scene to scene. The hedonism is casual. Damned Summer traveled the film festival circuit and was a Cannes Acid Section selection.
