LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)
A24 / Rose Glass’s queer crime drama is neon hued sex and violence taken to the extreme.
File Under: Neo-Noir, Queer Cinema, Thriller
"Love Lies Bleeding" marks Rose Glass's transition from the psychological depths of Saint Maud to a simmering landscape of desire and destruction. Set in the stark desert of 1989 New Mexico, the film pulses with a carefully calibrated tension and neon cinematography that recalls Nicolas Winding Refn's most stylized work. A24 films is the appropriate studio for the director to realize her vision. Glass demonstrates remarkable precision, transforming a lurid premise into a visually arresting meditation on violence and connection.
Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian deliver thrilling performances and electric chemistry on screen, inhabiting characters who navigate a world where love and brutality are inextricably linked. Ed Harris’s portrayal of the embodiment of moral depravity is not to be scoffed at either.
The film's soundtrack features tracks by Grace Jones, Patrick Cowley and Gina X Performance, a nod to the queer and androgynous of the past; the soundscape creates another layer of narrative sophistication, while amplifying the movie's sensual and subversive undertones. Cinematographically elegant, Rose Glass’s direction is unflinching. "Love Lies Bleeding" confirms Glass as a filmmaker of distinctive vision.
"Love Lies Bleeding", Rose Glass. 2024, USA. Running Time: 104 Minutes. English.Available for rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and Vudu.
DIVA (1981)
1981 French cyberpunk thriller
File Under: French New Wave Revival, Neon Noir, High Style, Operatic Thriller.
Jean Jacques Beinex delivers a feast for the eyes (and ears) in his first feature length “DIVA”, a genre bending cyberpunk thriller, love story, and testament to the power of music. In “Diva” Beinex explodes conventional narrative structure to pursue a new style of filmmaking that would be coined by French critic Raphael Bassan as “cinema du look”.
When an opera recording is pirated by an obsessive fan, the forces of the criminal underbelly of Paris are awakened, events are triggered, characters weave through the futuristic industrial wastelands + subways of the city, storylines combine, an epic chase scene ensues, the clash between high and low brow society forms before our eyes; all moving the visual, thematic and stylistic elements to the fore, further enhanced by a modern remaster of the original 35mm.
"Diva", Jean-Jacques Beineix. 1981, France.
Running Time: 117 Minutes. French.
Available for rent on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (2022)
2022 sardonic comedy
Ruben Östlund’s caustic satireTriangle of Sadness takes a wrecking ball to the excesses of wealth, privilege, and social hierarchies. Split into three acts, the film moves from the sterile artifice of the fashion industry to the grotesque opulence of a luxury cruise and finally lands in the chaos of survival, where the power dynamics flip entirely.
File Under: Satire, Social Commentary, Modern Dark Comedy, Class Critique.
Östlund, fresh from his success with Force Majeure, turns his lens to despicable characters representative of the worst of capitalism: vapid influencers, bored billionaires, and inept authority figures. Among them is Carl (Harris Dickinson), a male model grappling with his fragile ego, and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), his influencer girlfriend, in a deeply transactional relationship. Their luxury cruise—captained by an alcoholic and unhinged Marxist drunkard (played by the brilliant Woody Harrelson)—descends into chaos. Vomit fountains, dysfunction, and primal absurdity reveal that, when stripped of wealth and privilege, humanity’s most grotesque instincts emerge.
The cinematography embraces clean, hyper-realistic frames that accentuate the emptiness of wealth. The score crescendos to add a perverse sense of beauty to the film’s most unsettling moments. Östlund builds tension by letting his camera linger, allowing discomfort to marinate into black humor.
Awarded the 2022 Palme d’Or at Cannes, Triangle of Sadness’s blunt-force satire struck a nerve, with critics debating whether it skewers capitalism effectively or simply revels in its own shock value. But that seems to be precisely Östlund’s point: there’s no clean moral takeaway here.
A perfect counter-programming for those tired of the saccharine Triangle of Sadness is Ruben Östlund having fun with a cinematic shipwreck you can’t ignore.
"Triangle of Sadness", Ruben Östlund. 2022, Sweden-France.
Running Time: 147 Minutes. English-Swedish.
Available for rent on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Vudu.
BACURAU
2022 Sci-fi weirdo Brazilian western.
Brazilian writers / directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Filho take on race and class in their 2019 bizarro sci-fi Western flick “Bacurau”. The film bends genres and realities whilst following a small town and eccentric set of characters in the Brazilian outback; the town’s inner quarrels are exploded by an insidious existential threat. For sure, a heavy dose of psychedelic storytelling layered with criticism of Brazilian politics and Western economic imperialism. Available on prime video premium and other platforms if you’re willing to pay a small fee. 🇧🇷
N.APRIS LES DES
1971 avant garde shock and awe film . Adults only.
French experimental film writer/ director, Alaine Robbe Grillet presents a remix of his own work, “Eden and After”, taking subversion to a whole new level, confronting the viewer with surreal collages of potent carnal imagery. Plot is secondary. Strap on your seat belt for a sensory overload.: “N. Took the Dice”. Full film linked below. ADULTS ONLY.
THROW AWAY YOUR BOOKS, RALLY IN THE STREETS
1971 Japanese experimental meditation
Shuji Terayama’s avant-garde film critiques American & Japanese materialism through the narrative of a poor young man trying to make himself a life in a capitalist society with a dysfunctional family. The imagery is psychedelic/ surreal, soundtrack is punk singalong, the cinematography experimental, a script chock full of symbolism and social commentary. Teryama in 1971, a master at work.
RED DESERT
1964 Antonioni classic starring monica vitti
“With one startling, painterly composition after another—of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, looming docked ships—Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age.” - The Criterion Collection
Jean Luc Godard
french new wave master
This week’s art post is selected stills from film’s by the great Jean Luc Godard who passed this year at age 91. It is an understatement to say Godard was a giant, he profoundly impacted cinema and modern thinking several times over. His work was always advancing, changing form and challenging the status quo. He was always morally outrages and always willing to stay on the margins. He understood life’s cruelty and saw art as a tool for resistance. He celebrated the defiance of beauty, the grace of charity, and the aunthenticity of being a moral enemy of the state.
Je vous salue JLG!
