Quote:
A poignant romantic drama examines the life of gay 26 year old, ex-monk, school teacher living in Manhattan. When he meets a man at a gay bar, they connect and are soon living together. Unfortunately their views on monogamy don’t match.
http://nitroflare.com/view/F576EEE06F3F17F/Christopher_Larkin_-_%281974%29_A_Very_Natural_Thing.mkv
Language(s):English
Subtitles:NONE
Quote:
Andreas and Stefan lead a happy and passionate life: Together with their beloved tomcat Moses, they live in a beautiful old house in Vienna’s vineyards. They work as a musician and as a scheduler in the same orchestra and they love their large circle of friends. An unexpected and inexplicable outburst of violence suddenly shakes up the relationship and calls everything into question – the blind spot that resides in all of us.
http://nitroflare.com/view/86D6E71786E52DB/Handl_Klaus_-_%282016%29_Tomcat.mkv
https://uploadgig.com/file/download/c8801ad147c637D3/Handl Klaus – 2016 Tomcat.mkv
Language(s):German
Subtitles:English (hardcoded)
As Orlando (Magdalena Montezuma) enters the world of “freaks,” the movie develops scenes from a mythological netherworld, the Spanish Inquisition, the Middle Ages, and a few other settings to focus on unusual characters with physical or mental oddities. By the time the various vignettes that take place in these separate periods are completed, each with their own points and counterpoints, the “freaks” seem much less odd than their physically normal contemporaries. After Orlando has revealed much about the human condition through glimpses of a P.T. Barnum side-show, Siamese twins, as well as modern sexual morés, her journey with the viewer is completed. The device of Orlando, the time-traveler and liberated bisexual is based on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando: A Biography.” The same set of actors play different roles in each of the five chronological segments. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
First Episode
Where it is told how Orlando Zyklopa, with her seven dwarf-shoemakers, as special attraction at the instant shoe repair service at the Freak City department store, strikes the anvil; how she is driven away by Herbert Zeus, store manager; then, as queen of the seven dwarf-athletes, how she climbs up onto the Trojan Horse; and finally how she refuses to be the successor of the stylite, which leads to her death.
Second Episode
Where it is told how Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, is born as a miracle on the steps of a basilicum in the Middle Ages and, with her two heads, enchants those around her with a lovely song in two-part harmony; how she cannot prevent the flagellants from taking two acrobats prisoner and leading them out of the city in their procession, which leads her to pursue them with the famous dwarf Galli, a painter, up to the convent of Wilgeforte, the bearded woman saint; how she is dressed in new clothes in the department store warehouse; and how she undergoes an amazing metamorphosis while Galli paints her portrait.
Third Episode
Where it is told how Orlando Capricho, alias Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, has to admit that she has been captivated by a special travel offer made by the department store, announced by a seductive voice; how she learns distrust when she sees her mirror image; how she falls into the hands of the persecutors of the Spanish Inquisition at the end of the 18th century; how she has to undergo a thousand dangers and adventures, barely escaping internment in prison; and how she is finally deported with people of every description, which Galli El Primo illustrates faithfully.
Fourth Episode
Where it is told how Mr. Orlando, alias Orlando Capricho, alias Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, is engaged at the entrance to the psychiatric ward by the freak-artistes of a side-show traveling around the country; how he quickly falls in love with the left side of Siamese-twin sisters, named Lena, something the other, named Leni, cannot abide; which is why Mr. Orlando, entangled in a rather confusing affair, stabs Leni and thereby also inevitably kills Lena, whom he loved so much; and how the head of the troupe is forced to sentence Mr. Orlando to death in compliance with an age-old tradition of the artistes.
Fifth Episode
Where it is told how Mrs. Orlando, called Freak Orlando because of her special orientation, alias Mr. Orlando, alias Orlando Capricho, alias Orlando Orlanda, alias Orlando Zyklopa, is engaged as entertainer and tours Europe with four bunnies; how she is in great demand as an attraction for openings of shopping centers, family celebrations, etc.; how, finally she is engaged to host the show at the annual festival of ugliness; how she crowns the winner and bestows a trophy with the inscription: “Limping is the way of the crippled,” and, at the end of the festival, we are told that the story is over.
http://nitroflare.com/view/DA001AB7D6AEC8A/Freak_Orlando.mkv
Language(s):German
Subtitles:None
Quote:
Cheryl is young, Black, and lesbian, working in Philadelphia with her best friend Tamara and consumed by a film project: to make a video about her search for a Black actress from Philly who appeared in films in the 30s and was known as the Watermelon Woman. Following various leads, Cheryl discovers the Watermelon Woman’s stage name and real name and surmises that the actress had a long affair with Martha Page, a White woman and one of Hollywood’s few female directors. As she’s discovering these things, Cheryl becomes involved with Diana, who’s also White. The affair strains Cheryl’s friendship with Tamara. More discoveries bring Cheryl (and us, her audience) to new realizations.
http://nitroflare.com/view/8B03E48D7346145/Cheryl_Dunye_-_%281996%29_The_Watermelon_Woman.mkv
Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, Spanish
Quote:
Interviews with a procurer and with nineteen boys and young men who are prostitutes in Prague. The youths range in age from 14 to 19. They hustle at the central train station and at clubs. Most of their clients are foreign tourists, many are German. The youths talk about why they hustle, their first trick, prices, dangers, what they know about AIDS, their fears (disease and loneliness), and how they imagine their futures. The film’s title, its liturgical score, much of it elegiac, and shots of the city’s statues of angels underline the vulnerability and callow lack of sophistication of the young men.
http://nitroflare.com/view/8CBFA503C30A889/Wiktor_Grodecki_-_%281994%29_Not_Angels_but_Angels.mkv
Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English (hardcoded)
Synopsis:
A Belgian woman looks back on her year at a Japanese corporation in Tokyo in 1990. She is Amélie, born in Japan, living there until age 5. After college graduation, she returns with a one-year contract as an interpreter. The vice president and section leader, both men, are boors, but her immediate supervisor, Ms. Mori, is beautiful and trustworthy. Amélie’s downfall begins when she speaks perfect Japanese to clients. She compounds her failure by writing an excellent report for an enterprising colleague. The person she least expects to stab her in the back exposes her work. Thus begins her humiliations. What can become of her and of her relationship with Ms. Mori and with Japan?
Review:
The latest movie to explore (and to exploit) Western fascination with Japan is Alain Corneau’s “Fear and Trembling,” adapted from a slim, autobiographical novel by Amélie Nothomb. Like “Lost in Translation,” Mr. Corneau’s film concerns a young strawberry-blond woman undergoing a comical and painful process of self-discovery in a Tokyo high rise. Unlike Scarlett Johansson’s character, though, the protagonist of “Fear and Trembling,” whose name is Amélie, is not entirely a stranger to Japan. Like Ms. Nothomb, she was born there, and returns as an adult hoping to transform herself into “a true Japanese woman.”
To achieve this, Amélie (Sylvie Testud), who grew up in Belgium and speaks flawless Japanese, takes a job at the Yumimoto corporation, a giant conglomerate in whose towering headquarters the entire movie takes place. She is hired as an interpreter, but soon discovers that particular tasks are less important than observance of the intricate, rigorously hierarchical codes that govern corporate behavior. Yumimoto, which seems to manufacture, import and export just about everything, runs according to a minutely calibrated pecking order and by notions of honor, shame and deference, all of which Amélie, in her eagerness to please, manages to violate, with disastrous consequences.
On a simple, anthropological level, “Fear and Trembling” illustrates a distinction between workplace cultures in Japan and the West that has long since been a truism in the business world, namely that Japanese companies value loyalty and obedience over individual initiative. When Amélie helps a mid-level executive who is not her boss with a report, both of them are punished and humiliated for violations of protocol, rather than rewarded for good work. Moments like this one seem well observed, though there are also times when the movie slips toward stereotyping.
But Mr. Corneau, an eclectic director with a mildly perverse sensibility, turns the conflict of cultures into a psychodrama that is at once lighthearted and intense. When Amélie first arrives at Yumimoto, she is fascinated by her immediate superior, Fubuki, whom she initially regards as a friend and protector. Fubuki (Kaori Tsuji), though, turns out to be Amélie’s principal tormentor, putting her through a series of torments and degradations that turn the bland offices and conference rooms of Yumimoto into a scene of sado-masochism that rivals the chateau in “The Story of O.”
The ingenuity of the film is that it conjures up this kind of erotic implication without being explicitly, or even implicitly sexual. The office turns out to be such a perfect setting for Fubuki’s voluptuous psychological cruelty that it seems to have been designed for just that purpose, with the company’s actual business as a sideline. As far as we know, neither Amélie nor any of her superiors and co-workers have a life outside Yumimoto, though they must go somewhere when the workday is over. But following them home would spoil the slightly artificial elegance of the story by introducing extraneous questions of psychology and motivation. This is a study of human behavior in captivity.
— A. O. SCOTT (New York Times)
http://nitroflare.com/view/A42E6BF2EF77BA8/Fear_and_Trembling_%282003%29_–_Alain_Corneau.mkv
Language(s):French, Japanese
Subtitles:English, Bulgarian (muxed)
reviev of Dream Machine from link
Burroughs’ Dream Machine On Film… Nearly., 26 March 2004
6/10
Author: scottanthony from Dorset, England
In theory: a short non-narrative film made to commemorate the visit of Burroughs and Gysin to the UK. In practice: four shorts (directed by Jarman, Kostiff, Maybury and Wyn Evans) broken up by footage of Gysin gazing at said machine.
In general, all of the shorts follow a similar template – homo-erotic images (cute boys dressed as angels etc) cut together with all manner of unpleasant ones in the name of ‘hallucinogenic experience’. Maybe like the effect of using the machine itself, the glimpses of poetry or associational insight are fleeting. Unless repetitive student-film nihilism and gay porn are your bag, that is.
Though it’s not without some interest, and is undeniably haunting in places, The Dream Machine’s far from a major work.
http://nitroflare.com/view/A534D088E1BC8BC/Dream.Machine-Derek.Jarman.Films.Collection.avi
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
Quote:
The dysfunctional twenty-three-year-old Sarah takes her six-year-old natural son Jeremiah from the home of his beloved foster parents with the support of the social service to live with her. Along the years, the boy shares her insane and low lifestyle and is introduced to booze and drugs and mentally, physically and sexually abused by Sarah, her lovers and her religiously fanatic family.
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
Quote:
An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.
http://nitroflare.com/view/5E3A1F8A526C75A/Eliza_Hittman_-_%282017%29_Beach_Rats.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/0e8e7977409cb/Eliza_Hittman_-_%282017%29_Beach_Rats.mkv
Language(s):English
Subtitles:English
The title refers to Madrid’s central square (from which all distances within Spain are measured). Zero may also describe the state of the lives of 14 strangers. The stories of these fourteen collide at this meeting point on a sultry August afternoon. Mistaken identities and second chances are among the results of this comedy of errors featuring, among other characters, a horny & gay university student, an internet-love seeker flamenco dancer, a macho but lovelorn gigolo, an actress, and a businessman starved for new sexual experiences.
http://nitroflare.com/view/EAD5DD573571A6C/km.0_Kilometer.Zero.avi
https://publish2.me/file/4d312535d4da2/km.0_Kilometer.Zero.mp4
Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English (hardsub)
Quote:
Early 1990s. With AIDS having already claimed countless lives for nearly ten years, Act up-Paris activists multiply actions to fight general indifference. Nathan, a newcomer to the group, has his world shaken up by Sean, a radical militant, who throws his last bits of strength into the struggle.
http://nitroflare.com/view/EE6CEBD92EB7328/Robin_Campillo_-_%282017%29_120_Beats_per_Minute.mkv
http://nitroflare.com/view/661B8B486F8FCD3/120.Battements.Par.Minute.2017.FRENCH.1080p.BluRay.x264-120BPM.English.srt
https://publish2.me/file/5cb4fcfd84125/Robin_Campillo_-_%282017%29_120_Beats_per_Minute.mp4
https://publish2.me/file/5f03703e2556a/120.Battements.Par.Minute.2017.FRENCH.1080p.BluRay.x264-120BPM.English.srt
Language(s):French
Subtitles:English
Quote:
When August suggests a suicide pact to his lover Beto, the skater soul mates emerge to defiantly ride through one final Los Angeles day punctuated by moments of lyricism, chaos, and contention. How far can love take you? To the very end? On their final night, August and Beto will discover an unpredictable environment and a unique cast of characters as they skate toward a certain end. As dawn rises on their final morning, the only question remaining will be…who ends it first?
http://nitroflare.com/view/42A0D8C299B167F/Henry_Alberto_-_%282016%29_Hara_Kiri.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/bd0e0f68d37f1/Henry_Alberto_-_%282016%29_Hara_Kiri.mp4
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
Quote:
Brimming with sex and violence, The Wound is an exploration of tradition and sexuality set amid South Africa s Xhosa culture. Every year, the tribe s young men are brought to the mountains of the Eastern Cape to participate in an ancient coming-of-age ritual. Xolani, a quiet and sensitive factory worker (played by openly gay musician Nakhane Touré), is assigned to guide Kwanda, a city boy from Johannesburg sent by his father to be toughened up, through this rite of passage into manhood. As Kwanda defiantly negotiates his queer identity within this masculine environment, he quickly recognizes the nature of Xolani s relationship with fellow guide Vija. The three men commence a dangerous dance with each other and their own desires and, soon, the threat of exposure elevates the tension to breaking point.
http://nitroflare.com/view/D0C1550C6B6152F/John_Trengove_-_%282017%29_The_Wound.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/c1da85f33c04d/John_Trengove_-_%282017%29_The_Wound.mkv
Language(s):Xhosa, Afrikaans, English
Subtitles:English
Synopsis:
Compilation of archive footage from 1919 to the present, from both documentary and fictional sources, set to music, illustrating the huge changes in LGBTQ life in Britain (mainly England) over the 20th century.
Review:
Sensitive, cheeky and enriched with a healthy shot of self-awareness, Daisy Asquith’s kaleidoscopic Queerama is as much a reflection on the shifting status of LGBTQ people within the UK pop culture landscape – as both subjects and creators – as an ambitious summation of the corresponding societal changes in the last century or so. A loosely structured montage of decades-spanning archive footage, it’s perhaps of little surprise that the film doesn’t have a whole lot new to say but the empathy and energy by which these images and ideas are edited together into a single piece make Queerama an entertaining and often poignant tribute to the progress made, as well as an implicit acknowledgement of the progress yet to be made.
Though there is no formal voiceover narration to Asquith’s cultural collage, the device finds more playful substitutes in the film’s pop soundtrack – which regularly benefits from the acerbic lyricism of John Grant – and the dated, amusingly starched narration from old documentary footage. The latter forms a vague framing device that serves a few noteworthy functions. As well introducing new subjects for the film to explore (be it gay night life, or the threat of physical assault faced by the openly queer) and providing the odd piece of statistical data or historical context regarding British LGBTQ life, the narration also suggests a sly wink on Asquith’s part as she offers her own modern equivalent to these antiquated reports in the form of this very film.
“Queerama is as much a reflection on the shifting status of LGBTQ people within the UK pop culture landscape – as both subjects and creators – as an ambitious summation of the corresponding societal changes…”
“Queerama is as much a reflection on the shifting status of LGBTQ people within the UK pop culture landscape – as both subjects and creators – as an ambitious summation of the corresponding societal changes…”
While it’s easy to snigger at the old-fashioned voiceover and its naïve insights on ‘homosexuality’ (“Contrary to popular opinion, most of them don’t look any different from anyone else.”), Queerama doesn’t shy away from the harmful consequences of the widespread ignorance implied in these decades-old clips. Much of the film sees an intriguing push and pull between the hardships faced by members of the LGBTQ community, and the love and exuberance found even in tough times (the inevitable segment on HIV/AIDS is preceded by several minutes of sensual Goldfrapp-backed footage celebrating sexuality).
Though the structural looseness of Queerama generally proves liberating, there are also moments where the film seems at a loss for how best to use its 70-minute runtime, sometimes re-treading familiar points with another batch of footage. Luckily, Asquith’s fluid sense of style keeps Queerama watchable even when it isn’t so revelatory. And for all the topical territory covered by Asquith’s colourful medley of pop culture excerpts – usually explicit in their queerness, but sometimes tellingly implicit – the film’s most exciting and richly supported insight is the one that is formed from its many independent pieces. That is, queerness has always been a part of British life, persisting in our neighbourhoods, films and TV shows whether we noticed or not.
— David Pountain (FilmDoo)
http://nitroflare.com/view/88699C56A2E6D4C/Storyville.Queerama.720p.WEB.h264-UNDERBELLY.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/87c913b521230/Storyville.Queerama.720p.WEB.h264-UNDERBELLY.mp4
Language(s):English
Subtitles:English (muxed)
The Louise Brooks Society: wrote:
Beggars of Life is a terse drama about a girl (Louise Brooks) dressed as a boy who flees the law after killing her abusive stepfather. With the help of a young hobo, she rides the rails through a male dominated underworld in which danger is close at hand.
Kevin Brownlow wrote:
Beggars of Life, with Louise Brooks and Richard Arlen, is a story of tramps, by the hobo writer Jim Tully. The customary freshness and unstudied casualness of most American silent films is replaced here by a dignified, carefully studied style, suggestive of the European cinema, and indicating a conscious striving toward artistry.
The American film makers produced their most satisfying results when they turned a picture out to the best of their ability, allowing for time and budget. When the European success began to disturb Hollywood, a penchant for artistry affected many of its directors. Their rough enthusiasm and vigorous pace were immobilized under treacly layers of respect. The sets and lighting became complex and studied, the pace slowed and spontaneity began to give way to contemplation, and a meticulous care.
In Wellman’s case, this did not destroy his natural flair for filmic storytelling. Beggars of Life is brilliantly thought out and superbly made. But this is the wrong subject to develop into a fine art; it is as though Jack London had borrowed the delicacy of Galsworthy to write Call of The Wild.
P169 – The Parade’s Gone By – Kevin Brownlow – Published by Knopf, New York (1968)
http://nitroflare.com/view/F10FD3318912314/Beggars.of.Life.1928.720p.BluRay.x264-SADPANDA.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/289caf6c19c7c/Beggars.of.Life.1928.720p.BluRay.x264-SADPANDA.mp4
Language(s):Silent with English Intertitles
Subtitles:nONE
Quote:
Marina, a trans woman, is a singer and waitress. She has just moved in with her lover, Orlando. One night, Orlando wakes up feeling very unwell. Unable to stand up, he collapses and falls down a staircase. Marina rushes him to a hospital, but Orlando dies, apparently from a brain aneurysm. Marina is viewed with suspicion both by the doctors and Orlando’s family. A detective comes to the restaurant where Marina works, and asks Marina questions suggesting that Orlando’s death had resulted from a physical altercation between the two of them. Meanwhile, Orlando’s ex-wife and Orlando’s son forbids Marina from attending the wake or the funeral. Marina struggles for the right to be herself in spite of the allegations. And to make matters worse, the exclusions might have more to do with her identity rather than the death of Orlando.
http://nitroflare.com/view/0251D37FB179BB9/Sebastian_Lelio_-_%282017%29_A_Fantastic_Woman.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/270ad0b9d4e4a/Sebastian_Lelio_-_%282017%29_A_Fantastic_Woman.mkv
Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English, German, French
Quote:
Early accolades can be a curse to an artist’s career. Directors whose first features meet with critical hallelujahs are often harshly scrutinized for subsequent efforts. Few debuts have enjoyed the delirious reception afforded Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mère. Dolans second film, Les amours imaginaires, one of the most eagerly anticipated films to emerge from Quebec in some time, is an exhilarating exception to the sophomore jinx. It’s as good as its predecessor – maybe even better – and best of all it is radically different.
Les amours imaginaires centres on two fast friends: Marie (Monia Chokri), a supremely confident and sexually aggressive combination of Bette Davis, Carmen Maura and Anna Karina; and the cherubic, acerbic Francis (Dolan), who has managed to manoeuvre through multiple affairs without ever getting too attached. Like the aristocrats of Dangerous Liaisons transported to contemporary Montreal, Marie and Francis spend their time being fabulous, condescending and bitchy.
Then, at a dinner with friends, they spot curly-haired Nico (Niels Schneider), whom they simultaneously dismiss and obsess over. Soon, Francis sets up a meeting and the three become inseparable. But the more intimate they get, the more remote and unattainable Nico becomes, sending Francis and Marie’s comic obsession into overdrive.
Part gleaming farce, part tough-minded exploration of the inherent insanity of love and desire, Les amours imaginaires is all the more remarkable given the young age of its author. (Few filmmakers this young would have attempted farce, never mind triumphed at it.) The film is also a startlingly mature and cohesive distillation of Dolan’s cinematic influences. If his debut channeled Eustache and Truffaut, Les amours imaginaires owes as much to vintage Almodóvar as it does to the French New Wave. And yet the film remains entirely personal and unique. Les amours imaginaires suggests Dolan is one of the finest young filmmakers to emerge in the last decade. –TIFF
http://nitroflare.com/view/CCA77D0F383943D/Xavier_Dolan_-_%282010%29_Heartbeats.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/0e903571af8a1/Xavier_Dolan_-_%282010%29_Heartbeats.mkv
Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:English
Quote:
“Becoming someone else: oneself…, to pull out your heart and take off running.” This is the starting point in darkness and light that inspired French filmmaker Anne Fontaine to make Reinventing Marvin [+], premiered at the 74th Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti section. An existential journey that starts as “a radical experience of exile” because “the poor, sad, gay child is totally out of place, is a stranger in his own home, within his own family.” This individual in internal exile is Marvin Bijoux (played at age 14 by Jules Porier and then by Finnegan Oldfield as a young man) who has an immense amount in common with the adolescent protagonist of Edouard Louis’s shocking autobiographical novel The End of Eddy, the bestseller from 2014 that served as the trigger for the script written by Anne Fontaine and Pierre Trividic, but the duo have deviated from the same by imagining his escape into a world that is larger than the small village he was born in.
Marvin lives in the Vosges Mountains, in a very humble social class where culture is non-existant and human interactions are brusque. You eat chips for dinner before switching on the telly, the father (Grégory Gadebois) is constantly tinkering about while mostly thinking about his next drink, and Marvin, a delicate, sensitive and shy adolescent in a universe of “brutes” who has been nicknamed “the skeleton” by his mother (Catherine Salée), shares a room with his younger brother and his older step-brother. Most importantly, he is subjected to violent homophobic harassment at school, which makes him question his sexual identity even more when he finds out that his family is also asking questions of their own (“why does he embarrass us like this with his faggot ways?”) and that for his father, homosexuality is “something degenerate, like a kind of mental illness.”
Considered a desert rose trapped in an environment where machismo rules, Marvin, nonetheless, chances upon a way out in the form of an improvisation course at school and the well-meaning support of the school principal (Catherine Mouchet). Selected in an audition for the theatre course at Epinal high school, he leaves his family (albeit with difficulty) and goes to boarding school. This is a turning point that will be followed by three other propitious meetings a few years later: with Abel (Vincent Macaigne), professor at the centre for dramatic arts in Nancy who takes him under his protective wing and introduces him to Paris, followed by Roland (Charles Berling) who opens the doors to a wealthy artistic world in which Marvin feels out of place (“the torment of a little faggot who has found a shortcut by jumping from bed to bed”), but also where he meets a certain Isabelle Huppert who (in her own way) helps him to take his story to the stage. It is a performance where Marvin’s family is positively crucified, which has consequences on the life of the young man who has succeeded in creating a new identity by artistically expressing his deep unease, while at the same time being fully aware of where he comes from..
“What is within us is what counts.” This is the search that is brought to the screen by Anne Fontaine using very sophisticated editing, alternating between the different eras of Marvin’s journey. Flash forwards, voice offs and texts written by the young man that explain past events: The filmmaker very skilfully weaves a tale where the actors deliver exceptional performances (special mention for the charismatic Finnegan Oldfield). While the story of this “ugly duckling” and his “guardian angels” might seem a bit too much like a fairy tale to some, the air of melancholy infused by the filmmaker gives Reinventing Marvin a seal of authenticity that makes this feature film masterful and moving.
http://nitroflare.com/view/698FE198B0EE357/Anne_Fontaine_-_%282017%29_Marvin.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/8ca844af71db7/Anne_Fontaine_-_%282017%29_Marvin.mp4
Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:none
Quote:
Flesh was filmmaker Paul Morrissey’s first production for Andy Warhol. The story concerns a bisexual hustler (Joe Dallesandro) who does tricks so that he can pay for his wife’s lover’s abortion. The film made headlines when it was confiscated by the police during one of its earliest showings in 1970. Though this event is unlikely to repeat itself, Flesh is still explicit enough to elicit gasps from even the most jaded of underground-film enthusiasts. — Hal Erickson
http://nitroflare.com/view/FA23E289AAEFF22/Paul_Morrissey_-_%281968%29_Flesh.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/66a41f58d079c/Paul_Morrissey_-_%281968%29_Flesh.mp4
Language(s):English
Subtitles:None
Quote:
As anyone who saw last year’s Being 17 knows, the great, undersung French filmmaker Andre Techine doesn’t direct like most 74-year-olds. It wasn’t just the racing camera and breathless pace that made that chronicle of the evolving bond between two rural high-school boys so vital; it was how alive Techine was to the possible twists and turns of male sexuality, as well as to the sometimes surprising leaps of the human heart. Though the movie was far from perfect, it was ripe with emotional and physical spontaneity — as open and vibrant a work as one could imagine from an artist of any age.
Techine’s latest, Golden Years (which premiered at Cannes in a Special Screening slot), is similarly spry, a World War I-set tale of love, war, crossdressing and murder told with little of the stuffiness or preciousness we’ve come to expect from period dramas based on true stories. But the feeling and generosity of spirit that fill the frame in the director’s best offerings are conspicuously missing. Adapting Fabrice Virgili and Daniele Voldman’s nonfiction book La garconne et l’assassin (The Flapper and the Killer) about a French army deserter who disguised himself as a woman in order to dodge the authorities, Techine has a made an atypically chilly, undernourished movie — one that leaves a knot of themes pertaining to gender, sexuality and identity frustratingly tangled. Given the richness and texture of even mid-tier Techine, it’s a letdown.
The writer-director’s name may help secure distribution outside France, but Golden Years is unlikely to garner much attention, even with its buzzy subject matter.
Despite scrambled chronology that never feels entirely justified, it’s not difficult to piece together the plot. Stoic-looking Parisian seamstress Louise (Celine Sallette of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Pleasures) is happily married to Paul (Stranger by the Lake’s Pierre Deladonchamps, a sort of younger, more delicate Willem Dafoe). It’s 1914 and Paul leaves to fight in the war, but one glimpse of the stricken-looking protagonist cowering in the trenches is all we need to understand that a soldier’s life is not for him.
Louise visits Paul one day, and they get to spend a couple of blissful hours at an inn. He gulps down wine, she helps him bathe and they lie naked in bed, bodies intertwined. These scenes establish a convincing intimacy between the two, as well as an intriguingly modern dynamic: “I feel like I’m protecting you,” Paul whispers to Louise as she nestles her head in his chest; “I feel like I’m protecting you, too,” is her reply. Paul is the fragile one, Techine and co-writer Cedric Anger suggest, while Louise is steadier, more sure of who she is and what she wants.
Soon after returning to his unit, Paul injures his finger in battle. Depressed, homesick and revolted by the violence that surrounds him, he flees the infirmary and returns to Louise, hiding out in their basement (much to the consternation of Louise’s live-in, pipe-smoking Granny, played by Virginie Pradal). But Louise quickly tires of that restrictive arrangement, and comes up with the idea of having Paul dress as a woman when he ventures outside. Her decision is presented as one of clear-eyed, hard-headed pragmatism. “It’s not so bad being a woman,” she tells him as she puts makeup on his face and a wig on his head. “At least we don’t wage war.”
With that line, Golden Years suggests that for Paul, becoming “Suzanne” (as he names his alter ego) will be more than a way to avoid the police; it will also amount to a form of therapy for his PTSD — an exercise through which he can adopt a persona that, in its gentility and inherent pacifism, is the opposite of the brutal macho identity so traumatically imposed on him in the army. In other words, Suzanne allows Paul to purge himself of the ugliness of war.
Louise procures her husband an electrolysis machine and pierces his ears, completing the transformation (though with her wavy bob and stylish 1920s garb, Suzanne bears a distracting resemblance to Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl). Immediately after first getting all dolled up, Paul/Suzanne mounts Louise, and they have sex. Is he turned on by crossdressing? Or trying to demonstrate his virility to compensate for embracing, and exteriorizing, his feminine side?
It’s hard to tell, since Techine and Anger so studiously circumvent any kind of character psychology, relying on sparse, declarative dialogue and brisk narrative streamlining to tell a complex story. Techine’s work has always been characterized by his respect for the mysteries of the heart and mind — his refusal to explain or overanalyze the actions of the people that populate his films. But whereas that matter-of-fact, intrinsically compassionate approach comes off as deeply humanistic in masterworks like Wild Reeds (one of the very best films about adolescence) and My Favorite Season (one of the very best films about sibling relationships), here it seems evasive and even a bit lazy.
The unprobing nature of Golden Years becomes particularly problematic when Paul/Suzanne begins turning tricks in public park Bois de Boulogne. As depicted, the swift progression from transvestism to prostitution is not persuasive; even less so is Louise’s decision to start going to the woods to share in Suzanne’s sexual adventures. Understandably, Techine doesn’t want us to judge his characters. But by declining to explore their motivations or conjure their inner lives, he places us at too much of a remove; we end up feeling very little for them, despite the efforts of two supremely capable leads.
Later, a love triangle forms between Paul/Suzanne, Louise and Charles de Lauzin (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), a count who hosts the couple at lavish parties where flappers and dandies get debaucherous on the dance floor. Around this point, the war ends, and Paul is granted amnesty. But he’s reluctant to stop living as Suzanne, and a local emcee (Michel Fau) invites him to play himself in a cabaret show recounting his and Louise’s unusual experience. The interspersed performance scenes, with their romance and lyricism, are more compelling than the rather prosaic drama unfolding offstage.
A breaking point comes when Louise and Paul have a child, and Paul lashes out, raging against the pressures of domesticity and rejecting his wife’s plea to stop living and working as a woman. “I’m stronger when I’m Suzanne,” he tells her, setting up the conflict of the final act: “And I refuse to choose between Paul and Suzanne.”
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Even a minor Techine movie is worth a look for the unshowy beauty and balance of the filmmaking: Golden Years boasts handsome cinematography, nimble camerawork (as always with Techine, lots of gorgeous, fluid tracking shots), crisp editing and seamless production design. Music is almost exclusively diegetic, with Bessie Smith’s “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” used to especially evocative effect in one sequence.
What’s unfortunate is how much the filmmaker seems to be holding back. The most wonderful thing about Techine’s movies is their messiness, a function of their auteur’s insatiable interest in both the specifics of French society and the more universal aspects of human behavior. But while Golden Years looks, on paper, to be right in his comfort zone — an oft-ignored zone of ambiguity, fluidity and mutability of identities and desires — Techine never settles into it as you expect him to.
It’s the rare Techine film to feel clenched, shrunken — which is perhaps, in a way, fitting for a story of people trying to make life liveable in the ever-looming shadow of death.
http://nitroflare.com/view/3C17BA42A527CA8/Andre_Techine_-_%282017%29_Golden_Years.mkv
https://publish2.me/file/537839707b3b9/Andre_Techine_-_%282017%29_Golden_Years.mkv
Language(s):French
Subtitles:None
