Search results for: Bertrand Bonello

"A film about a group of bawdy broads making a life in a decadent whorehouse could make for tasteless rubbish, but House of Pleasures is a masterful film that takes it's sex laden subject, and shapes it into an unsettling tragedy that examines the companionship of the women, and the messy entrapment of a profession they've committed to."

Bonello's decadent brothel showcases Tolerance and Pleasures within a hyper-dimensional timeline

Breaking out around the time where NYFF is on its last legs, Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma (October 12 to 23) kicks in with about four times the size in volume, and obviously more of an eclectic range. This year is the festival's big 40 - and for the occasion they've commissioned some of the names who've been a part of the festival to each contribute a short film in the context of what is being called the "Cartes Blanches" series. Denis Côté, Deco Dawson, Sophie Deraspe, Rodrigue Jean, Zacharias Kunuk, Marie Losier, Catherine Martin, Bruce McDonald, Théodore Ushev and Denis Villeneuve will each submit a four minute short.

#10. Play - Ruben Östlund (Cannes 2011) Riveting, harrowing, infuriating. Never has adolescent bullying and manipulation been so watchably mundane. Östlund has clearly got this meandering realism down to a T; applying it to a clearer form and purpose has its ups and downs in comparison to his previous, more free-form film, Involuntary. Borrows, and expands on, the better moments of Haneke's Code Unknown, which is to say: he understands the depressing impossibility of inter-cultural unity.

Cannes is going to have a stellar Main Comp (Pedro, Ramsey, Lars, Dardenne Bros., Kaurismaki) but there are still plenty of unexpected no-shows this year. Making Venice extremely happy we don't find: Giorgos Lanthimos, Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, Aleksandr Sokurov, Christophe Honoré, Lou Ye, Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Brillante Mendoza.