The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie first published by Little White Lies, as entry 156 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie opens with the ambassador Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), his colleague François Thévenot (Paul Frankeur), François’ wife Simone (Delphine Seyrig) and younger sister Florence (Bulle Ogier) being driven…
Hidden (Caché) first published (in a different version) by EyeforFilm The opening credits of Michael Haneke‘s Hidden (Caché) appear over a static wide shot of a leafy street. During the course of several minutes, nothing in particular happens: a passerby’s footsteps, and the song of a bird, can be heard; a man exits a house…
La Grande Bouffe first published by VODzilla.co Written in 1785, but not published until 1904, the Marquis de Sade’s notorious novel The 120 Days of Sodom became an instant cause célèbre for its sometimes moralising, sometimes glorifying depiction of four well-to-do middle-aged gentlemen enacting a four-month orgy of lust, perversion and murder upon an ensemble…
Review first appeared in Sight & Sound, September 2013 Review: “It should be interesting,” says Crispian Davison (A.J. Bowen) to his younger girlfriend Erin (Sharni Vinson) about the first gathering in years of the entire Davison clan. “You’ll see.” Sure enough, tensions abound as underachieving academic Crispian and the other three adult Davison siblings –…