What if you could only take one memory with you for eternity-what would you choose? This is the question at the heart of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 film, After Life.
The beautiful and touching film follows several recently deceased people as they arrive at a processing center to be interviewed, choose a memory, and then have it recreated for them before they move on. The film also combines scripted interviews with actors with those of real people reminiscing about their lives.
Trailer- “The First Monday in May”
The 2016 documentary The First Monday in May, follows chief curator of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Andrew Bolton as he prepares the 2015 exhibition China: Through the Looking Glass. The film also follows Anna Wintour as she prepares for the Met Gala party that accompanies the exhibition. Bolton’s work on the show with director Wong Kar Wai, as well as the negotiations and logistics behind creating it are fascinating.
The film is full of celebrities and fashion designers including Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Paul Gaultier, and John Galliano.
The Costume Institute’s latest exhibition, also curated by Andrew Bolton, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, closes on 9/2.
Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, from 1966, explores the relationship between an actress who has become mute, played by Liv Ullman, and the nurse who is in charge of her care played by Bibi Andersson. The pair travel to a cottage on the beach where their personalities begin to conflict and blend.
The unsettling film contains several experimental elements, as well as images that are outside of the main narrative, that provide more questions than answers.
Famous French actor Alain Delon passed away on Sunday, 8/18.
The stills above are from his film Le Samourai from 1967, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. The beautifully shot film follows a mostly silent Delon as an assassin trying to discover who is trying to kill him. It also stars his then wife Nathalie Delon.
After hearing the sad news of Shelley Duvall’s passing, I decided to watch a few films from her filmography and started with 3 Women, released in 1977. Based on a dream writer/director Robert Altman had, the film follows Duvall and Sissy Spacek as their lives and identities intertwine in the California desert. Later a third woman played by Janice Rule, becomes more important in the pair’s world.
Using reflections, water, mirrors, mirrored actions, and twins, Altman creates a mysterious space for these women to inhabit. Adding to the unsettling energy of the film are a series of murals created by artist Bodhi Wind (Charles Kuklis).
It’s definitely worth a watch, with an ambiguous ending that has been subject to many interpretations.
