Runs & Limited Engagements

The reckless air of a border town gives extra flavor to a Mexican New Year’s Eve when the night urges Latin American Studies professor Alejandro (Deveze) into the waiting arms of temptation. A missed flight to his home in León strands the cautious middle-aged professor in Tijuana, where the town’s seedy air suggests danger, but the energy in the streets issues an irresistible invitation. After an unexpected encounter with pretty blonde former student Ana (Veta), an American, he joins a party of reveling academics. It’s the first course in an evening laced with comic undertones that will evolve into a tangled odyssey of new sights, new emotions, and a dangerous attraction. Director van Baal (LARGO) makes superb use of Tijuana’s colorful panorama of street action as Alejandro mixes with the vendors, mystery characters, sex workers, and would-be friends who will challenge his status quo. In Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

Now in its 20th year, this is the ace of animation compilation shows, prized by fans, students, and industry professionals. It is curated by animation expert and producer Ron Diamond, who has scouted 38 eventual Oscar nominees and 11 winners among the many prize-winners culled from around the globe.
This year’s crop of 15 films from 6 nations includes:
THE GREEN BIRD, French gag-fest about a nervous bird's frantic efforts to protect her unhatched offspring;
ONE SMALL STEP, the touching tale of a girl's dream to become an astronaut;
GRANDS CANONS, a rapid-fire survey of the vast inanimate domain of tools, implements, instruments, appliances, and utensils;
FLOWER FOUND!, a provocative Dutch fable of barnyard injustice;
AGE OF SAIL, the sweeping saga of a misanthropic sailor who reluctantly rescues a teenaged girl;
MY MOON, a spectacularly visualized fantasy of a celestial love triangle;
WEEKENDS, the dreams and realities of an imaginative boy shuttled between his divorced parents.
In English and German with English subtitles. Note: Some violent content. DCP digital. (MR)

They don't make politicians like Daniel Patrick Moynihan anymore, although we could certainly use someone like the man who said, "People are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts." Growing up poor in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, Moynihan (who died in 2003) wore many hats--technocrat, author, Harvard professor, adviser to presidents, U.N. ambassador, U.S. Senator--but this lively documentary portrait is more than a resumé. It gets to the heart of a complex, unclassifiable individual: flamboyant yet thoughtful, effectively pragmatic without abandoning his New Deal-bred principles--whether they involved crafting LBJ's War on Poverty, writing the controversial Moynihan Report, passionately defending Israel in the U.N., or shocking his colleagues by joining the Nixon Administration (where he came one Senate vote short of putting through a revolutionary Family Assistance Program). DCP digital. (MR)

This year’s most deliciously offbeat and unpredictable film blends the otherworldly edge of Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindquist ("Let the Right One In") and the fantastical bent of director Abbasi (SHELLEY) for a contemporary fable that messes with the mind on the darker side of folklore. Tina (Melander), a customs agent with an instinct for detecting smugglers and felons through her unique sense of smell, detains a suspicious man. Although innocent of wrongdoing, he’s strangely familiar, with a stubby, hulking physique that matches her own. The two bond over other similarities, including strange matching scars, and what Tina ominously calls “chromosomal abnormalities.” Director Abbasi holds a whopper of an astounding reveal close, as this chameleon-like story unfolds as an investigative mystery, bizarre romance, and revenge drama traversing the border between real and surreal. In Swedish with English subtitles. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

One of the earliest French-language hits in the U.S., this fondly remembered film has been hard to come by in recent years, making this sharp, more complete, newly subtitled 4K restoration all the more welcome. Novelist/playwright/director Pagnol (whose Marseille Trilogy played here last year) turns once again to his native Provence to tell a story imbued with regional flavor and a deft blend of humor and heartache. Lacking good bread and eye-catching women, a rural village is all agog over the arrival of a skilled baker (Raimu) and his sultry young spouse (Leclerc of LE CORBEAU), but their bliss proves short-lived when the lust-struck lass runs off with a hunky shepherd. The grieving baker's loaves turn as low as his spirits, so the famished villagers set aside their differences to find the wayward wife and persuade her to come home. Orson Welles called Raimu "the greatest actor who ever lived" and, in a 1952 poll, selected THE BAKER'S WIFE as one of the twelve best films of all time. In French with English subtitles. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

Tarkovsky's breakthrough film is loosely centered on the revered 15th-century Russian monk and icon painter. Rublev's life, about which little is known, is expanded into a vivid panorama of medieval Russia, a lyrical embrace of the natural world, and a deeply personal consideration of the artist's struggle to create. Wandering through a world filled with cruelty and tormented by his own wavering faith, Rublev retreats into silence, until he encounters a seemingly miraculous event. From the dizzying balloon flight that opens the film to the construction of a gigantic bell that climaxes it, Tarkovsky fills the screen with densely layered images of breathtaking beauty and power. Censored and unauthorized versions have produced multiple ANDREI RUBLEV's; this "final cut" version is the one preferred by Tarkovsky. In Russian with English subtitles. New 4K DCP digital widescreen restoration. (MR)

A dapper Iranian immigrant in a designer suit trolls Copenhagen’s upscale singles bars
with the unspoken goal of speedy marriage. His story weaves a dark web as the expected
trajectory of a Green Card-themed drama is upended into a thriller. Esmail (terrific
newcomer Esmaili), a good-looking guy with the manly appeal of a young George
Clooney, is taken by a succession of women for a well-heeled business executive, but
he’s not. He is a desperate man with a working-class job and a visa that’s about to
expire. Fate puts the smart, saucy Iranian-born Danish citizen Sara (Rezanejad) in his
path, and, despite his resistance and her savvy recognition of his transparent scheme, the
sparks fly. Just when it seems that respectability, community, and love may be his, the
past comes calling. In Danish, Persian, and English with English subtitles. DCP digital.
(BS)

No film better captures the ferment of postwar Paris, a youthful outburst of pent-up
ambition, idealism, and artistic and sexual exploration, hatched in sidewalk cafés,
smoky Latin Quarter dives, and bohemian apartments. This high-spirited comedy-
drama centers on a quintet of twentyish Parisians, variously interconnected by blood,
love, friendship, and artistic interests: Julien (Gélin), an aspiring ethnographic
filmmaker; his best friend Roger (Ronet), an unemployed cinematographer
moonlighting as a jazz trumpeter; Roger's girlfriend Thérèse, a talented actress;
Julien's girlfriend Christine, an untalented actress who uses sex to get ahead; and her
brother François, an aspiring playwright with designs on Thérèse. In French with
English subtitles. New 2K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

Chris Marker (SANS SOLEIL) was the acknowledged master of the film-essay, and THE
OWL'S LEGACY was perhaps his most ambitious project. Produced over several years
in the late 1980s, it was broadcast once in 1991 and then withdrawn because of the
sponsoring foundation's objections to some of its content. It wasn't shown again until
2007; it is now presented in a new restoration by the Cinémathèque Française.
THE OWL'S LEGACY consists of thirteen 26-minute chapters, each centered on a single
word (all Greek-derived, like so much of western vocabularies) that illustrates one facet
of the series' overriding question: "What is the role of Greece?"
Using as his model the Greek symposium--a banquet in which the flow of wine
accompanied the flow of ideas--Marker gathers together an eloquent roster of
philosophers, historians, scholars, filmmakers, and musicians to expound upon the
pervasive legacy of Greek thought in the modern world. What might start out looking
like a conventional collection of talking heads builds into a compelling polylogue, with
the speakers emerging as vivid characters with distinctive voices and points of view.
They are joined by another "voice," that of the unseen, unheard, but totally engaged
filmmaker Chris Marker, whose characteristically dazzling digressions and juxtapositions
illuminate, critique, and expand upon what is said.
All of this is overseen by the looming figure of the owl--symbol of Athens, the goddess
Athena, and wisdom--which recurs in various forms throughout the film to evoke the
ancient (but, in many ways, remarkably modern) Greeks' revolutionary quest for
knowledge and self-knowledge. In French, Greek, English, Japanese, and Georgian with
English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)

A sparkling comedy with troubling undertones, ÉDOUARD AND CAROLINE harks
back to the screwball classics of the 1930s and looks forward to the French New Wave
of the 1960s (Godard's A WOMAN IS A WOMAN seems especially indebted to it).
The marital squabbling of the opening scenes, though highly amusing, reveals the
tensions in Édouard and Caroline's marriage: he's a talented pianist frustrated by lack
of success and resentful of her upper-class roots. A party at the mansion of Caroline's
snobbish uncle, designed to show off Édouard's talent to wealthy potential patrons,
brings those tensions to a head, abetted by a missing waistcoat, an altered dress, a
lecherous cousin, and Édouard's petulance. Anne Vernon, little known in the U.S.
outside of her role as Catherine Deneuve's mother in THE UMBRELLAS OF
CHERBOURG, is a revelation as Caroline--vivacious, mischievous, and charming, but
capable of hitting back when necessary. In French with English subtitles. DCP
digital. (MR)

Chris Marker (SANS SOLEIL) was the acknowledged master of the film-essay, and THE
OWL'S LEGACY was perhaps his most ambitious project. Produced over several years
in the late 1980s, it was broadcast once in 1991 and then withdrawn because of the
sponsoring foundation's objections to some of its content. It wasn't shown again until
2007; it is now presented in a new restoration by the Cinémathèque Française.
THE OWL'S LEGACY consists of thirteen 26-minute chapters, each centered on a single
word (all Greek-derived, like so much of western vocabularies) that illustrates one facet
of the series' overriding question: "What is the role of Greece?"
Using as his model the Greek symposium--a banquet in which the flow of wine
accompanied the flow of ideas--Marker gathers together an eloquent roster of
philosophers, historians, scholars, filmmakers, and musicians to expound upon the
pervasive legacy of Greek thought in the modern world. What might start out looking
like a conventional collection of talking heads builds into a compelling polylogue, with
the speakers emerging as vivid characters with distinctive voices and points of view.
They are joined by another "voice," that of the unseen, unheard, but totally engaged
filmmaker Chris Marker, whose characteristically dazzling digressions and juxtapositions
illuminate, critique, and expand upon what is said.
All of this is overseen by the looming figure of the owl--symbol of Athens, the goddess
Athena, and wisdom--which recurs in various forms throughout the film to evoke the
ancient (but, in many ways, remarkably modern) Greeks' revolutionary quest for
knowledge and self-knowledge. In French, Greek, English, Japanese, and Georgian with
English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)

In a country shakily recovering from decades of dictatorship, a sheltered Paraguayan
woman tentatively begins to emerge from her shell in this rich character study with
undertones of social satire and political allegory. Approaching the far side of middle age,
the demure, deferential Chela (Brun) has been living a life of declining gentility in a
discreet lesbian relationship with her assertive and protective partner Chiquita (Irun).
When their mounting debts result in a prison term for Chiquita, Chela finds her horizons
almost imperceptibly widening, first when she is nudged into using her ancient Mercedes
to provide an unofficial taxi service for a coterie of bridge-playing acquaintances, and
then when she encounters a younger woman whose uninhibited sensuality and messy love
life exert a strange fascination. The day will come when Chiquita returns from prison,
but can things go back to the way they were? Ana Brun won the best actress award at the
Berlin Film Festival for her subtle and hauntingly expressive performance as the
accidental adventuress Chela. In Spanish with English subtitles. (MR)

Found at or near the top of most lists of the greatest British films, Terence Davies's
autobiographical masterpiece chronicles the lives of a Liverpool working-class family.
The narrative is divided into two modules: the first set during World War II and
dominated by the family's brutal father, the second centering on his children's entry into
adulthood and marriage during an early 1950s period of normalcy and stagnation. The
film's Proustian structure follows the circular paths of memory, and the soundtrack and
imagetrack resonate off each other in complex counterpoint. In particular, the soundtrack
is so memorably laced with period songs ("Buttons and Bows," "Bye Bye Blackbird,"
etc.) that the film seems almost a musical, perhaps a strongly revisionist version of
MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS. New 4K DCP digital restoration. (MR)

When FALBALAS, long unseen in the U.S., resurfaced during the recent round of
Becker retrospectives, several critics were struck by the resemblances between it and
Paul Thomas Anderson's THE PHANTOM THREAD. Boldly mixing romantic
comedy with Hoffmanesque fairy tale, the film centers on Philippe Clarence, a
brilliant, temperamental couturier who uses and discards women as easily as one
would last year's dress. At a creative ebb, he finds renewed inspiration in his best
friend's fiancée (Presle), but this one proves not so easy to forget. Becker beautifully
captures the bustling, hothouse atmosphere of the fashion house; Jean Paul Gaultier
cited this as the film that inspired him to become a fashion designer. In French with
English subtitles. DCP. (MR)