Set in 1942, during the Nazi occupation of France, director Losey's unnerving drama of identity and complicity channels Kafka's parables of nightmarish bureaucracies, Hitchcock's thrillers of mistaken identity, and Losey's own experiences as a blacklisted leftist during the McCarthy era. The protagonist is Robert Klein (Delon), an elegant Parisian art-dealer who is comfortably profiting off the fire-sale prices extracted from Jews fleeing the country. Then a copy of a Jewish newspaper is delivered to Klein's door, apparently by mistake. Contacting the authorities, he discovers that there is another Robert Klein in Paris, resembling him in many respects but notably different in one: he is Jewish. Our Mr. Klein sets out on a quest for his elusive double, in the process entangling himself ever deeper in the net of suspicion and surveillance that is engulfing France. Recently revived in a new digital restoration, MR. KLEIN enjoyed a record-breaking run at New York's Film Forum. In French with English subtitles. (MR)
Runs & Limited Engagements
Mr. Klein
1976, Joseph Losey, France, 123 min.
With Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Juliet Berto
"An event...All good films come to those who wait."—Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
“MR. KLEIN remains as strong and thought-provoking a film as it was over 40 years ago.” — Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 8th 2:00pm
- Fri, Nov 8th 6:00pm
- Sat, Nov 9th 2:00pm
- Sat, Nov 9th 8:00pm
- Sun, Nov 10th 5:00pm
- Mon, Nov 11th 7:45pm
- Tue, Nov 12th 7:45pm
- Wed, Nov 13th 6:00pm
- Thu, Nov 14th 6:00pm
- Fri, Nov 15th 4:00pm
- Fri, Nov 15th 8:00pm
- Sat, Nov 16th 3:00pm
- Sun, Nov 17th 4:45pm
- Mon, Nov 18th 7:45pm
- Tue, Nov 19th 6:00pm
- Wed, Nov 20th 8:00pm
- Thu, Nov 21st 6:00pm
Moulin Rouge
1952, John Huston, USA, 119 min.
With José Ferrer, Colette Marchand, Zsa Zsa Gabor
"Just looking at MOULIN ROUGE is reason enough to make special plans to see it. Oswald Morris' cinematography is overpowering."—Glenn Erickson, DVD Talk
Huston's biopic of Henri Toulose-Lautrec shares the setting but not the story of Baz Luhrmann's 2001 namesake musical. After a sensational opening can-can number, the film leaves the eponymous cabaret in order to concentrate on the stunted artist's unhappy life and loves, primarily his stormy relationship with the fickle prostitute Marie Charlet (vividly acted by Oscar-nominated newcomer Colette Marchand). The film's major virtues are its look and its ending. Huston and d.p. Oswald Morris flouted Technicolor guidelines in order to create a rich, soft-toned palette comparable to the artist's (Huston said he wanted the film to look "as if Toulouse-Lautrec had directed it"), augmented by Oscar-winning Art Direction and Costume Design. The unforgettable death-bed ending, simultaneously bitter and touching, was conceived by Huston while he was reading the biographical novel on which the film is based. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)
The Sweet Requiem
2018, Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, Tibet, 91 min.
With Tenzin Dolker, Jampa Kaisang Tamang
"An urgent but understated drama. The film puts its points across with a delicacy and sobriety rare in moviemaking."—Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
"One of the rare films that works equally well as a thriller, a tragedy, and an advocacy film."—Joe Bendel, J.B. Spins
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 8th 4:15pm
- Fri, Nov 8th 7:45pm
- Sat, Nov 9th 6:15pm
- Sun, Nov 10th 5:30pm
- Mon, Nov 11th 6:00pm
- Tue, Nov 12th 6:00pm
- Wed, Nov 13th 8:15pm
- Thu, Nov 14th 8:15pm
A harrowing adventure tale and a probing/tense psychological drama are played out against the background of Tibet's political struggle in this gripping film, the second fictional feature (along with over 20 documentaries) by the husband-wife team Sarin and Sonam (DREAMING LHASA). The narrative interweaves two different timelines. The first, set in the present, centers on Dolkar (Dolker), a 26-year-old Tibetan woman living in the Tibetan exile community in North Delhi, India. The second, taking place 18 years earlier, details the tragedy-haunted trek Dolkar and her father made with a group seeking to flee Chinese persecution. Effectively contrasting the cramped alleys of Delhi with the vast reaches of the high Himalayas, the two sides come together when Dolkar recognizes Gompo (Tamang), a refugee activist recently arrived in Delhi, as the guide who abandoned her and her father on that fateful journey. Thoughts of revenge prompt her to follow Gompo, but the truths she uncovers prove to be more complex than she expected. In Tibetan with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (MR)
"An invaluable resource. That it is very well made, featuring stunning shots of the models, and truly engrossing, makes it all the better."—Bobby LePire, Film Threat
"A great watch...This is one of those documentaries where you don’t think you’re that interested in the subject matter, but then it ends up being really fascinating and you learn about things that you never even knew existed."—Gillian Anderson, The Stranger
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 8th 6:00pm
- Sat, Nov 9th 6:15pm
- Sun, Nov 10th 1:30pm
- Mon, Nov 11th 6:00pm
- Thu, Nov 14th 8:15pm
The popular notion of taxidermy as a creepy Norman Bates/Jeffrey Dahmer obsession with dead things is immediately dispelled in this lively and surprising documentary. The common denominator of the varied assortment of taxidermists we encounter in the film is their enthusiasm—for animals, for nature, for wildlife preservation, and for this unique skill that merges art and science. Representing a subculture more outgoing than introverted, more youthful than old, more hip than nerdy, their process is fascinating, their styles are diverse, and their creations—from hummingbirds to black leopards, from museum dioramas to the fanciful hybrids of "rogue" taxidermy—are dazzling. DCP digital. (MR)
This Friday only! Following the 6 pm screening, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum will showcase a display of taxidermy specimens.
“Jaw-dropping…the juiciest insider look at a corrupt world leader since Barbet Schroeder’s GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA: A SELF PORTRAIT.”—Peter Debruge, Variety
“Engaging, appalling…political junkies will pig out.”—Todd McCarthy, Variety
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 15th 2:00pm
- Fri, Nov 15th 6:00pm
- Sat, Nov 16th 7:45pm
- Sun, Nov 17th 3:00pm
- Mon, Nov 18th 6:00pm
- Tue, Nov 19th 8:15pm
- Wed, Nov 20th 6:00pm
- Thu, Nov 21st 8:15pm
This revealing, politically hair-raising documentary portrait makes it clear that, at the age of 90, the vain, shoe-loving former first lady of the Philippines still has a firm grip on power behind the scenes as she maneuvers to catapult her son Ferdinand Jr., aka Bongbong, to the nation’s presidency. Palming a wad of cash, Imelda Marcos blithely peels off bills out the window of her limousine to scores of clamoring street kid kids—just one astonishing scene of noblesse oblige captured in a grippingly fascinating survey of the past and dangerously active present of this controversial grande dame. A beauty pageant contestant who snagged Marcos, a rising politician, after an eleven-day courtship in 1954, Imelda has long been famed as the luxury-loving power behind her husband’s bloody and corrupt regime, alleged to have fleeced the nation of billions. Gaining her subject’s eager participation, director Greenfield (QUEEN OF VERSAILLES) rolls out an incredible tale with obvious parallels in the world’s other political dynasties. DCP digital. (BS)
"Decades after its initial theatrical release, ORLANDO has all of its original allure intact, and then some. Sally Potter’s uniquely strange adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel has grown in stature."—Eric Kohn, Indiewire
Presented by Queen Elizabeth I with enough wealth to last him for eternity under the condition he remain forever young, the undying poet and nobleman Orlando whiles away his days wooing the daughters of foreign dignitaries. Then one day Orlando wakes up a woman and finds herself contending with the attentions of male suitors, gendered inheritance laws, and motherhood. Beginning in 1603 and ending in the 1990s, Potter's freewheeling adaptation of Virginia Woolf's queer literary touchstone proceeds as a series of impeccably costumed and art-directed episodes in which the ageless outsider Orlando (embodied with a beguiling androgyny by an iconic Swinton) faces physical transformation and the ever-changing currents of European history with creative resilience and a wry sense of humor. 35mm. (CW)
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 15th 8:15pm
- Sun, Nov 17th 3:00pm
- Fri, Nov 22nd 6:00pm
- Sun, Nov 24th 3:00pm
- Fri, Nov 29th 6:00pm
- Sat, Nov 30th 7:45pm
- Sat, Dec 7th 7:45pm
- Thu, Dec 12th 7:45pm
- Sun, Dec 15th 5:00pm
- Sun, Dec 22nd 1:45pm
This hilarious, award-winning one-woman show that inspired BBC’s hit TV series is a rip-roaring look at some sort of woman living her sort of life. Fleabag (Waller-Bridge) may seem oversexed, emotionally unfiltered and self-obsessed, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With family and friendships under strain, and a guinea pig café struggling to keep afloat, she suddenly finds herself with nothing to lose. DCP digital. (Description courtesy of NT Live)
SPECIAL PRICES: $14 GENERAL; $8 MEMBERS/STUDENTS
(Note: Matinee discounts do not apply to the October 25 screening.)
Please note: The running time of FLEABAG, listed in our printed Gazette as 100 min., has been corrected to 80 min.
The Green Fog
2017, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, USA, 63 min.
"A brilliant exercise in meta-narrative...Mainly, though, it’s just very, very funny."—Geoff Andrew, Sight and Sound
Guy Maddin (MY WINNIPEG) once again uses his special brand of voodoo alchemy to transform old movie tropes into something wildly and wittily original, this time focusing obsessively on the cinema's supreme monument to obsession, Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO. The premise is simple, the execution dizzyingly intricate: the story of VERTIGO is retold with clips from over a hundred San Francisco-set movies and TV shows that uncannily match (and, at times, imaginatively expand upon) moments from the original. The results are eerie, awesome, and hilarious. DCP digital. (MR)
Critic and author Jonathan Rosenbaum, whose new book Cinematic Encounters 2 includes an essay on THE GREEN FOG, is scheduled to appear for audience discussion.
"This rip-roaring tribute to a maverick artist trips along like a surreal odyssey, punctuated by lively reminiscences, choice clips and superb photographic material."—David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
"A film that its own subject might have appreciated...It refuses to take the standard approach and it will reward cinephiles who want something different than most film biographies can offer."—Kimber Myers, Los Angeles Times
The adventurous life of actor, director, photographer, art collector, and all-round Renaissance dude Dennis Hopper gets a fresh twist in this freewheeling memoir told from the point of view of his longtime buddy and right-hand man Satya De La Manitou. Photographed in noiresque black-and-white, Satya acts us our guide through Hopper's creative and personal battles on such milestones as EASY RIDER, APOCALYPSE NOW, and BLUE VELVET. The centerpiece of the film is a riveting inside account of the drug-fueled making of Hopper's glorious folly THE LAST MOVIE (playing here on Sunday and Monday). A suitably wide-ranging assortment of talking heads includes Frank Gehry, David Lynch, Michael Madsen, Damon Albam, Dean Stockwell, Julian Schnabel, Wim Wenders, and Dwight Yoakam. DCP digital.
Also on the program: A HERO OF OUR TIME (1985, USA, 27 min.), the first film by Michael Almereyda (HAMLET, MARJORIE PRIME), a post-western with Dennis Hopper as a gun-happy L.A. record mogul who menaces a leather-jacketed cool cat from Texas. New DCP digital restoration. (MR)
Director Nick Ebeling and executive producer J.C. Gabel are scheduled to appear for audience discussion, moderated by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
"An incredible film, shot through with a crazy dream logic."—Bilge Ebiri, Village Voice
"Bizarre and ambitious...deserves to be seen as a rebellious masterpiece from a visionary artist at odds with the system consuming his fame."—Eric Kohn, Indiewire
This most fragmented, self-referential, and self-indulgent neo-Western in history—produced, written, directed, and featuring Dennis Hopper at the height of his drug-fueled post-EASY RIDER triumph—gave the star the screen martyrdom of his dreams and the career-trashing move of his nightmares. A Hollywood film crew takes over a remote Peruvian village high in the Andes, carousing nightly in sight of the uncomprehending locals. The production moves on, but stuntman Kansas (Hopper) sticks around, only to become the sacrificial victim chosen to pay the steep price for cultural transgression. Referencing Godard and the Abstract Expressionist painters, Hopper slashes, splatters, interrupts, and deconstructs his story, delivering the narrative as a nonsequential pageant studded with dream sequences, hallucinations, and asides, and given breathtaking presence through the cinematography of Laszlo Kovacs. The cast is a veritable Who’s Who of Seventies New Hollywood icons and hipsters, including Peter Fonda, Severn Darden, Samuel Fuller, Michelle Phillips, Kris Kristofferson, Henry Jaglom, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Sylvia Miles, and more. 4K DCP digital restoration. (BS)
DENNIS HOPPER DISCOUNT!
Buy a ticket at our regular prices for ALONG FOR THE RIDE, and get a ticket for THE LAST MOVIE at the discounted rate with proof of your original purchase: General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4. (This discount rate applies to the second film only. Discount available in person at the box office only.)
The New Breed Film Showcase is focused on highlighting emerging millennial creators and providing an environment of pure creative energy. This quarterly collaboration between Creative Cypher and the Gene Siskel Film Center consists of six films, preceded by a DJ mixer and followed by a Q&A. (Troy Pryor)
7:15 - DJ Mixer with food
8:15 - Screening:
THE SUM OF HER PARTS (Briana Clearly, 5 min.)
THE ORCHESTRA (Curtis Matzke, 6 min.)
'TIL DEATH (Asha Flowers, 7 min.)
35 YEARS TIL NOW (David Saunders, 13 min.)
BROTHERS FROM THE SUBURBS: EPISODE 2 (Patrick Wimp, USA, 10 min.)
BROTHERS FROM THE SUBURBS: EPISODE 3 (Patrick Wimp, USA, 10 min.)
9:15 - Q&A with filmmakers Briana Clearly, Curtis Matzke, David Saunders, and Patrick Wimp, moderated by Mellisa Duprey
Jim Allison: Breakthrough
2019, Bill Haney, USA, 90 min.
Narrated by Woody Harrelson
"Inspiring and heartening...Check it out. Take the kids. Go twice. Just see the dang thing. You won’t regret it, and you’ll never forget it."—Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
“Compelling, often heart-wrenching…demonstrates how original thinking combined with dogged perseverance can literally change the world.”—Thomas Tunstall, Irish Film Critic
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 22nd 2:00pm
- Fri, Nov 22nd 6:15pm
- Sat, Nov 23rd 5:15pm
- Sun, Nov 24th 3:00pm
- Mon, Nov 25th 7:45pm
- Tue, Nov 26th 6:00pm
- Wed, Nov 27th 7:45pm
Real-life medical stories don’t come any more exciting or engaging than this one. Can a harmonica-playing good ol’ Texan boy and pal of Willie Nelson cure cancer? This profile of Dr. Jim Allison, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine, introduces the good-humored raconteur and amateur musician who is equally at home in a research lab or a blues bar. Having begun his life shadowed by cancer through the loss of his mother to lymphoma when he was eleven, Allison is seen as a maverick researcher relentlessly in pursuit of the disease in the once-debunked field of immunology. Ignoring skepticism and accepted theories, his unorthodox approach and intuitive thinking about the role of T-cells in the blood ultimately leads to a major advance in the cure for cancer. Director Haney finds suspense at every turn in Allison’s story as his breakthrough becomes a five-year race to the finish against considerable odds. DCP digital. (BS)
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
2018, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky, Canada, 87 min.
Narration by Alicia Vikander
“Astonishment. Pure, lurid, ravishing, genuine astonishment…intimate and colossal at once.”—Luke Hicks, Nonfics
"Both shocking and beautiful, the film impresses itself on the viewer with the awesome scale of the imagery—and with the urgency behind it."—Kate Taylor, Toronto Globe and Mail
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 22nd 2:00pm
- Fri, Nov 22nd 8:00pm
- Sat, Nov 23rd 7:45pm
- Sun, Nov 24th 4:45pm
- Mon, Nov 25th 6:00pm
- Wed, Nov 27th 8:15pm
The award-winning trio behind MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES and WATERMARK takes viewers on a journey as awe-inspiring as it is terrifying in its remarkable visual survey of the ways and means by which humankind continues to precipitously ravage the earth. The recently minted term Anthropocene refers to a new geologic phase, the present age’s successor to the 12,000-year Holocene epoch that followed the Ice Age. The dire significance is that the earth has reached a tipping point, and climate change, evolution, and extinction are now controlled and directed by human activity rather than by the forces of nature. Images of lithium pools in Chile’s Atacama Desert, phosphate mines in Florida, a landfill in Kenya, an Italian marble quarry, Russia’s most polluted city Norislk, and more, are seen as eerie monuments to a dying eco-system. The filmmakers find a grave, ironic beauty in every scar and intrusion on the world’s iconic landscapes, underlining the film’s implicit cry of danger. In English, Russian, Mandarin, and Cantonese with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
The Killing Floor
1984, Bill Duke, USA, 118 min.
With Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Moses Gunn
"One of the all-time great Chicago movies...a terrific history lesson, a compelling drama, and a lovingly recreated period piece all rolled into one."—Michael Glover Smith, White City Cinema
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 22nd 3:45pm
- Fri, Nov 22nd 7:45pm
- Sat, Nov 23rd 2:00pm
- Sat, Nov 23rd 7:30pm
- Sun, Nov 24th 4:45pm
- Mon, Nov 25th 7:45pm
- Tue, Nov 26th 7:45pm
- Wed, Nov 27th 6:00pm
Produced independently with grassroots support from union organizations and members, THE KILLING FLOOR was broadcast on PBS, received critical acclaim, then virtually disappeared outside of murky VHS copies. A new 4K digital restoration brings back this powerfully authentic historical drama, with events and characters drawn from real life. Beginning in 1917, the hard-hitting narrative centers on Frank Custer (Leake), who leaves his destitute Mississippi farm for the promised land of Chicago. He gets a job in the stockyards, but he soon finds himself caught in a crossfire of bitter conflicts—labor against management, union workers against non-union workers, blacks against whites—that will explode in the infamous race riot of summer 1919. Director Duke (A RAGE IN HARLEM, DEEP COVER) draws vivid characterization against a broad canvas of the racial, ethnic, and class tensions that shook Chicago during a crucial period of turmoil and growth. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)
Producer-writer Elsa Rassbach and lead actor Damien Leake are scheduled to appear on Friday (7:45 only) and Saturday (both shows); they will be joined via Skype by director Bill Duke (tentative). Filmmaker, critic, and instructor Michael Glover Smith will moderate the Friday (7:45pm) discussion, and Black Harvest Film Festival Co-programmer and Consultant Sergio Mims will moderate the Saturday, 2pm discussion.
Downton Abbey
2019, Michael Engler, UK, 122 min.
With Michelle Dockery, Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville
“It works. It really works…good-hearted and clever.”—Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com
"What a lovely and welcome encore...a real treat."—Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 29th 2:00pm
- Fri, Nov 29th 7:45pm
- Sat, Nov 30th 5:15pm
- Sun, Dec 1st 3:00pm
- Mon, Dec 2nd 7:30pm
- Tue, Dec 3rd 6:00pm
- Wed, Dec 4th 7:30pm
- Thu, Dec 5th 6:00pm
Come ’n' get it, Downton fans! We’ve got the upstairs, the downstairs, and everything in between. Writer Julian Fellowes and his team have whipped up the ultimate big-screen extravaganza for those who can’t get enough after six seasons of the popular BBC series. Britain’s historic Highclere Castle, otherwise known as the fictional Downton Abbey, hosts a homecoming of sorts, in this luscious self-contained saga of the aristocratic Crawley family and their household staff on the eve of a royal visit. It’s 1926, barely a shade beyond the Victorian era etiquette-wise, as these things go at Downton. With King George V and Queen Mary on the way, the clan’s smart and ever-spunky ingenue Lady Mary (Dockery) summons beloved old-school butler Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) out of retirement to rally the faithful crew of servants, including Mrs. Patmore, Bates, Thomas, Daisy, Anna, and all the regulars. Intrigues and crises take on personal dimensions, and the snooty demeanor of the royal entourage will prove a challenge to upstairs and downstairs alike. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)
The Thursday screening is a Movie Club event, moderated by Virginia Heaven, Associate Professor of Fashion Design at Columbia College Chicago.
The Friday (11/29) 2 pm and Tuesday (12/3) 6 pm screenings are Open-Captioned.
Give Me Liberty
2019, Kirill Mikhanovsky, USA, 110 min.
With Lauren “Lolo” Spencer, Chris Galust, Max Stoianov
“A jolt of a movie, at once kinetic and controlled…it’s irresistible.”—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“Warm, fiercely independent…a boisterous and freewheeling joyride.”—Peter Debruge, Variety
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 29th 2:00pm
- Fri, Nov 29th 6:15pm
- Sat, Nov 30th 3:00pm
- Sun, Dec 1st 4:30pm
- Mon, Dec 2nd 7:30pm
- Tue, Dec 3rd 8:15pm
- Thu, Dec 5th 6:00pm
Lurching and sprawling into new territory for comedy, this saga of one day in the life of Milwaukee medical transport van driver Vic (Galust), a conscientious young Russian American, turns into a manic melting-pot adventure. On the wacky, star-crossed day in question, Vic, who drives clients with special needs to their daily destinations, becomes the backseat protagonist in a high-energy urban road movie that puts the interlocking stories of a clutch of unscheduled passengers in the driver’s seat. Rider Tracy (Spencer), who doesn’t let a wheelchair slow down her queenly sense of command, is joined by a rambunctious group of mourners en route to an impromptu Russian funeral, including Dima (Stoianov), the life-of-the-party nephew of the deceased, and an odd assortment of regulars and hangers-on. Director Mikhanovsky’s marvelous non-professional cast of stars in the making neatly overturns any stereotypes regarding differently-abled actors, for a rollicking and profoundly touching caper. In English and Russian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
The Friday (11/29) 2 pm and Thursday (12/5) 6 pm screenings are Open-Captioned.
Monos
2019, Alejandro Landes, Colombia/Argentina, 102 min.
With Julianne Nicholson, Moisés Arias, Sofia Buenaventura
"A monumentally cinematic experience of lush wilderness and raw emotions."—Tomris Laffly, RogerEbert.com
“Overpoweringly tense and deeply mad…something between APOCALYPSE NOW, LORD OF THE FLIES, and EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT.”—Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 29th 4:15pm
- Fri, Nov 29th 8:30pm
- Sat, Nov 30th 8:00pm
- Sun, Dec 1st 5:30pm
- Tue, Dec 3rd 6:15pm
- Wed, Dec 4th 7:45pm
- Thu, Dec 5th 8:15pm
A ragtag clutch of teenage guerillas, living rough in a jungle encampment, plumb the dark depths of a childlike capacity for depravity in Colombian director Landes’s (PORFIRIO) bizarre, mesmerizing, future-set parable on the temptations of power. Minions of a remote revolution that is never specified, and with no authority structure but their own, heavily armed half-wild children sport names like Rambo, Wolf, Lady, and Bigfoot. They live by their own invented rituals, rules, and mating games, until a crisis over a dead cow rips away all pretense of social order. Random violence, half-truths, and sexual jealousy complicate a power struggle over a valuable female American hostage (Nicholson), whose escape attempts bring the group’s internal struggle to a fissure. A percussive atonal score by experimental composer Mica Levi perfectly complements the film’s haunting, unpredictable edginess. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)
Celebration
aka YVES SAINT LAURENT: THE LAST COLLECTIONS
2007, Olivier Meyrou, France, 74 min.
"A searching, sensitive and revealing portrait. Saint Laurent was essential to 20th-century culture, and CELEBRATION shows the inevitable fading of glory as well as the enduring features of his life’s work."—Glenn Kenny, The New York Times
“Essential viewing...A priceless addition to our understanding of how Yves Saint Laurent—the man, the myth, la marque—operated…essential viewing.”—Peter Debruge, Variety
Showtimes:
- Fri, Nov 29th 4:30pm
- Sat, Nov 30th 6:15pm
- Sun, Dec 1st 3:00pm
- Mon, Dec 2nd 6:00pm
- Tue, Dec 3rd 8:30pm
- Wed, Dec 4th 6:00pm
- Thu, Dec 5th 8:30pm
Legally prevented from release for many years by Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent’s life partner and business manager, CELEBRATION is a fly-on-the-wall chronicle of preparations for the fabled designer’s final collection before his brand was sold to Gucci in 1998. Intimately revealing but less than flattering, this documentary pulls back the curtain on the glamorous façade to see Saint Laurent as an ill, chain-smoking, tic-ridden recluse, a prisoner of his own monumental unhappiness, while the domineering, eagle-eyed Bergé micro-manages an empire of submissive seamstresses, malleable models, and film-star influencers. Filming over three years, director Meyrou balances an inside look at the hands-on making and calculated presentation of the fashion with a view of the principals in this illusion-based industry that doesn’t miss a trick. In French and English with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)