NYFF: I Remember "Memoria"

by Jason Adams

You can quite literally say that Memoria begins with a bang, as its inciting incident is just that -- a loud noise waking someone from sleep. But as far as it ending with a whimper, well, the only whimper its end will summon will be your own, as the lights come up and you realize your mind's been blown and that you're desperate to get back into the zen dream-state that Apichatpong Weerasethakul and his on-screen co-conspirator Tilda Swinton have lulled you into. I've spent the past week since seeing the film in just such a state of want. And so the news of the film's not-normal release pattern (which was weirdly the film headline I saw upon exiting the film -- further proof this movie actually transports you into its own reality?) has brought me both joy and sadness. A melancholia of its own.

In case you missed the news Memoria will travel the country, one art-house theater to another, only screening on one screen at a single time and never, not ever they say, hitting streaming...

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1986: Straight Best Friends

Before each Smackdown, suggestions for alternates to Oscar's roster... 

Tilda Swinton in "Caravaggio"

1986 was, from the digging I've done, a fascinating year for queer cinema. Some of the films originated in '85 but belatedly hit the US  in 1986, disparate efforts such as Desert Hearts, My Beautiful Laundrette, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, and What Have I Done To Deserve This?!. Meanwhile, Working Girls premiered at that year’s Cannes but didn’t get a US release until February 1987. All of these films showed up in one form or another alongside pure-cut ‘86 releases like Parting Glances and Caravaggio, indicating a shifting tide of indie and mainstream cinema with vested, complex, even sympathetic interests in LGBT themes and characters, often made by queer filmmakers. Not only that, but the films themselves are risky and provocative. Save for the deeply unpleasant Mala Noche, all are worth real engagement, and you couldn’t go wrong checking out any of them.

Still, it must be asked - what about the straight people? What is their contribution here? What about the S.B.F.? Y’know, the Straight Best Friend?

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Luca Guadagnino @ 50: A Trilogy of Desire

Happy belated 50th to Luca Guadagnino.

by Cláudio Alves

Like many a director in film history, Luca Guadagnino's cinema is characterized by common themes, through lines transversal to all his works, though more evident in some than others. During the release and promotional tour of Call Me By Your Name, the Italian auteur came to realize that his last three films could be construed as an unofficial trilogy of desire, though he later repudiated the notion. Nevertheless, akin to Bergman's Silence of God tercet, Guadagnino's I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, and Call Me By Your Name complete a three-part thesis in cinematic form. Instead of the Swedish master's spiritual dread, we have a multifaceted portrait of human desire as a force so great it's both overwhelming and life-changing, magical and terrifying, a blessing, a curse, perchance a deliverance…

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Luca Guadagnino @50: Melissa P

Happy 50th Birthday to Director Luca Guadagnino today! Here's a look back at his little seen sophomore feature

by Jason Adams

For Luca Guadagnino, the process of making his second feature film Melissa P. in 2005 was not a good one. The signs were all there in advance, if he hadn't been lured in by the big American studio Sony that was financing the film -- for one, well, Sony itself. The studio ended up being terrifically intrusive, shoving on a puritanical ending and even hiring an on-set handler for the filmmaker, and he's said he feels the finished project was more their work than his own. But even earlier than that he'd only been able to make it halfway through the novel One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed on which the film was based. A sort of modern The Story of O it tells the loosely autobiographical story of a teenage girl discovering her body alongside a few sado-masochistic tendencies, and he's said he found the book schlocky but that he thought he could patch over those bits with some psycho-analysis. And, of course, Cinema. Always that...

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Cannes Red Carpet Finale: Tilda, Adèle, Regina, Sharon, Gemma...

by Nathaniel R

As the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival recedes into the past, can we all agree that even after all these years, Tilda Swinton remains the most exciting red carpet icon? Consider that she chased that blue eye ribbon, with a frankenstein-pieced metallic look and an exquisitely tailored blue suit, then a red dog collar, and to close out the festival went with this cavalcade of androgynous billowing white pieces.

And because her face deserves exquisite fashion, too, she paired them with a different improbably shaped hairdo each time for good measure. She always keeps us guessing. The only thing you can safely predict about Tilda at each event is that she'll be memorable. 

More final Cannes '21 looks after the jump...

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