There’s a moment in Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book where the forerunner of Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) takes home footage of a young girl who—perhaps for the first time in her life—watches an incoming train coming to a station.…
VIFF Review: Happy End
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. The opening few moments of Michael Haneke’s newest button-pusher Happy End leaves a few open-ended questions—the one I’m most eager to talk about involves a possible animal rights violation. Of course, animal torture…
VIFF Review: BPM (Beats Per Minute)
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. In the electric first half of BPM (Beats Per Minute) the film charts the movement of a group of HIV/AIDS activists in France in the early 1990s, just as the virus became a…
VIFF Review: Faces Places
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Faces Places (or in French: Visages Villages) comes equipped with so much detailed history and deeply embedded feeling between its characters that the winsomeness and tragedy almost writes itself. Equally the result of…
Movie Review: Elle
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Paul Verhoeven’s ventures into irreverence and topical discussion have always been assigned to lavish psychosexual entertainment, mostly overlooked however are his films’ dramatic undertones, which are always sincere, biting and deeply self-aware. Elle…
VIFF Review: Elle
To read previous VIFF coverage, click here. Paul Verhoeven’s ventures into irreverence and topical discussion have always been assigned to lavish psychosexual entertainment, mostly overlooked however are his films’ dramatic undertones, which are always sincere, biting and deeply self-aware. Elle…