Film Comment Selects 2014

Our Sunhi

A former film student awakens romantic longing in three men who cross her path in this acutely observed take on misread behavior, indecision, and awkward interchanges between the sexes from one of cinema’s undisputed masters of moral comedy.

Me and You

Free reception for ticket holders with food and wine courtesy of the Italian Wine Commission in the Furman Gallery starting at 7:00pm!

A teenager from a well-to-do-family tries to escape the outside world by shutting himself in his mother’s basement, but finds himself sharing the space with his heroin-addicted older half-sister in Bertolucci’s first Italian-language feature in 32 years.

Betrayal

Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge star in this rarely screened adaptation of one of Harold Pinter’s greatest plays, a semi-autobiographical portrait of an adulterous affair.

Blood Glacier

Scientists researching climate change at a research base in the German Alps discover a mysterious substance leaking from a glacier containing micro-organisms that can infect multiple hosts, and soon do, in this over-the-top creature feature for the Global Warming age.

Cannibal

The blunt title of this quietly disturbing, creepily atmospheric, and deeply perverse character study of a small-town tailor who forms a connection with his “masseuse” neighbor won’t prepare you for the slow and mesmerizingly deliberate experience in store for you.

Cherchez Hortense

Jean-Pierre Bacri and Kristin Scott Thomas are together at last in this old-school relationship movie by frequent Rivette and Ruiz screenplay collaborator and ex–Cahiers du cinéma critic Pascal Bonitzer, an underrated filmmaker in his own right.

City of Pirates

Funny, frightening, and enigmatic, this rarely screened film by the late Raúl Ruiz is like a cross between Peter Pan and Friday the 13th as told through a wildly baroque visual style that suggests a collaboration between Georges Méliès and Sergio Leone.

Enemy

In his second collaboration with Villeneuve, Jake Gyllenhaal gives his best performance to date as both Adam, a reserved and humorless history professor, and Anthony, an animated and cocksure bit-part actor who catches the academic’s eye due to their alarming resemblance.

Fat Shaker

In this singular and cryptic film from a subversive new voice in Iranian cinema, an obese con man uses his attractive deaf-mute son to extort money from predatory women looking for a boy-toy—until one of his marks makes herself at home, with unexpected consequences.

Felony

Moral dilemmas abound in this tense police drama starring Tom Wilkinson and Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the screenplay, another knockout from the Australian production collective behind Animal Kingdom.

Healthcare Mayhem: The Carey Treatment + The Hospital

Suspicion abounds in this month’s Film Comment Double Feature of two early-1970s medical gems: The Carey Treatment, an elaborately plotted mystery thriller starring James Coburn, and The Hospital, a blackly comic drama by Network writer Paddy Chayevsky.

Flesh of My Flesh

Director Denis Dercourt in person for Q&A!

An unsettling and strikingly oblique psychological horror film that gives new meaning to the term “motherly love,” Flesh of My Flesh takes us into the schizoid reality of a woman whose young child has a rare medical condition that requires a highly unusual diet.

Ghosts

The spectral figures of Petzold’s Ghosts are young nomads on the margins of Europe’s economy, two young women drifting between state institutions, foster homes, and menial work programs who forge an ambiguous but tender alliance.

The Hypnotist

Hallström returns to his native tongue for the first time in 25 years for this twisty, visually striking Nordic noir about a psychologist (the great Mikael Persbrandt) who’s lured back into hypnotism—a practice he’d sworn off—to help solve a horrific crime.

Intruders

Director Noh Young-seok in person on February 20!

This twisty, blackly comic suspense thriller from South Korea follows a screenwriter who rents a winter cabin in a remote country backwater to concentrate on his latest project, but finds himself surrounded by a colorful and noisy cast of characters.

Metro Manila

In this Sundance Audience Award winner, a family of poor rice-farmers travels from the desolate mountains to bustling Manila in the hopes of making some money, only to discover that the exploitation they faced at home is nothing compared to what greets them in the big city.

The Sacrament

Director Ti West in person for Q&A!

Indie horror specialist Ti West adopts a first-person found-footage approach, with his usual flair and assurance, for this story of a Jim Jones–type religious cult that will stick in your mind long after the credits roll.

Top of the Lake

Free Screening

Elisabeth Moss is a detective who investigates the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl in New Zealand in this thrilling, seven-episode television series, perhaps the toughest, wildest drama Campion has ever made.

We Are the Best!

Best-friends Klara and Bobo defy the stifling conformity of their adolescence by joining forces with a Christian classmate to form a punk-rock band in early-1980s Stockholm.

The Weight

This exquisitely shot, one-of-a-kind tale centers on a sickly hunchbacked mortician who takes pride and pleasure in cleaning and dressing the dead and his burdensome younger stepbrother, who wants nothing more than to be a woman.

Wolfsburg

A self-absorbed luxury car salesman flees the scene of an accident that injures a young boy. But when he meets the boy’s supermarket-worker mother (Nina Hoss), he becomes embroiled in a melodrama of lies, romantic obsession, and simmering class conflict.