Due to ongoing technical issues, this week’s Cine-File email will not be sent out. We’re working to resolve the problem, but in the meantime, please help spread the word that our latest listings and write-ups are available as always here on cinefile.info.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Sapphopalooza at the Music Box
Music Box Theatre – See showtimes below
Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA (Sweden)
Saturday, 11:30am
Like CITIZEN KANE (1941), PERSONA is still the one of the most written about films in the canon (Raymond Bellour, Jacques Aumont, Robin Wood, Roger Ebert, Paisely Livington, P. Adams Sitney, Susan Sontag, Andrew Sarris, to name a few, all waxed famously on it). In a career of countless theatrical productions and 48 feature films, PERSONA remains Ingmar Bergman’s crowning achievement. After his trilogy (THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, WINTER LIGHT, THE SILENCE), the Swedish auteur had plans for a major work titled THE CANNIBALS, but the project fell through. The image of two women sitting together comparing hands became the seed for his next film, with a working title of "Kinematography." Recruiting the striking Bibi Andersson and not-yet legendary Liv Ullman, the director collaborated to make a new vision with constant experimentation and evaluation (three quarters of the film would be reshot). At this point in the '60s, directors across Europe were wading in the cinematic revolution brought on by Godard and others of the French New Wave. The then-48-year-old theater director affirmed the developments of the cinematic revolution to further build his craft. To paraphrase Susan Sontag, the film opens in darkness before the arc light of a projector is kindled and a rapid progression of images overwhelms the viewer: an erect penis, a silent film cartoon, or nails driven through hands, images that were deeply personal to Bergman’s psyche. The chamber drama begins in a hospital. A nurse, Alma, is assigned to care for a now mute stage actor, Elisabet. For her recovery, the two travel to an isolated cottage on the sea. Alma regales the mute with her life story, speaking of her darkest regrets. Elisabet writes a note to the doctor, telling of all Alma has disclosed. When Alma reads the letter, tensions begin to rise. The more time spent together, the women’s identities intertwine. “Persona” translates to mask, a hiding of the face. In the film, only through time do the characters reveal their true selves. Alma uses her supposedly normal life to mask her past traumas and fears while Elizabet hides behind her illness. As is often the case, neither use their mask for malicious reasons, but for survival. Alma can pursue a happy life by way of a bright disposition. Because of her condition, Alma never has to reveal herself directly and confront her past. Although muteness takes her away from the stage, the malady becomes her haven. Bergman asserts, “She finds she can no longer use words. She becomes violently disturbed; loses her ability to express herself.” In cinema, language does not have to be trusted, nor should it be. As spectator, the quest for truth is scaled through an index of image, sound and edit to measure against "the word." As an auteur who kept a day job as a theatre director, Bergman often depended on the spoken word in his work. While there is some cinematic experimentation in his trilogy (monologues addressed to the camera, long sequences of silent images, and the infamous "Bergman close up"), PERSONA is a slap in the face from the get-go. By way of a conversation started by Jean-Luc Godard, he ascends the form for both the New Wave and himself. (1966, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
---
Lizzie Borden's BORN IN FLAMES (US)
Sunday, 11:30am
With a concept, style, and politics that are still radical and relevant, Lizzie Borden's 1983 film gets a revival screening that is all-too-timely. Railing against the patriarchal and racist structures that remained in even the most progressive corners of American Society after the '60s and '70s, the film thrusts us into a feature-length narrative of critique. Borden is able to place her ideology front and center, but also let the story sneak up around it. Embracing the gritty look of both 16mm film and the more battered parts of New York City in the early '80s, and combining them with an objective camera, she uses her low budget as a storytelling asset. The world in which the anarchist movement dubbed the Women's Army carries out its counterrevolutionary campaign of pirate radio and direct action is rendered complete through a skillful combination of narrative and documentary modes. Artificial news clips about the progress of the current Socialist government and covert operations of the Women's Army's are mixed with observational shots of unemployed men and women on the streets, and we are constantly reminded of the veiled nature of the allegory. Other fictional scenes feel like we're watching the unedited negotiations between rival factions in a civil war as shot by an embedded cameraperson. When the pirate radio DJ—who acts as the film's voiceover narrator—declares that the true nature of socialism is constant revolution, it seems a natural reinforcement of the film's message, rather than a didactic add-on. Managing to tow the line between preaching and pandering is not an easy task when taking on the very fiber of our society, and rarely has a film done it with such ease. (1983, 90 min, 35mm) [Jason Halprin]
---
Floria Sigismondi’s THE RUNAWAYS (US)
Wednesday, 7pm
Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—what would any self-respecting film related to rock music do without them? The plot of Italian-Canadian music video director Floria Sigismondi’s feature film debut, THE RUNAWAYS, has little else in it. But to call it clichéd or shallow entertainment would be to overlook the depth Sigismondi also includes in her beautifully written screen adaptation of the autobiography Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story. Currie, the lead singer of the 1970s, all-girl rock band The Runaways, was 15 years old when she was tapped by music producer Kim Fowley and his young guitar protégé, Joan Jett, to be the jailbait that would help make the band a success. The Runaways lasted four years, cutting four studio albums and one live album before breaking up; Sigismondi takes us from their inception to implosion as seen through the eyes of Currie. The opening scene shows Currie (Dakota Fanning) getting her period for the first time and becoming grossed out by her sister Marie (Riley Keough) French-kissing her boyfriend. We soon meet Jett (Kristen Stewart), then Joan Larkin, being told that girls don’t play electric guitar or shop in men’s apparel sections. Defiant and defiantly punk, she recognizes and approaches Fowley (Michael Shannon) outside an L.A. club and intrigues him with her idea of forming an all-girl rock band. By now, Currie has transformed herself into a David Bowie clone. As Fowley and Jett scour a club for someone with the right style to be their lead singer, Currie, sitting alone, stares daggers at Fowley that hit him right in his rock ‘n’ roll gonads. The creation of the song “Cherry Bomb,” the party gigs, the low-budget US tour, the fan-mobbed Japan tour, and the jealousy that cracked The Runaways comprise the arc of the film. What really impresses is the way Sigismondi makes every step of the journey intimate and real with her close-ups and patiently crafted scenes. Her art school background asserts itself with some occasional symbolism through her choices of camera angles and images. For example, we see a close-up of a stencil Jett uses to spray-paint “Sex Pistols” on a t-shirt. At first, it appears only the word “sex” will be applied—a projection of Fowley’s marketing strategy and her own assertive sexuality. In another scene, Currie uses a pay phone to call her sister. Setting the action in the middle of an empty lot containing only the dubiously placed phone booth and an abandoned car, Sigismondi communicates, albeit a bit obviously, the isolation Currie feels from the life she has left behind. And when Currie ODs in a doorway, a very high crane shot looking down at her collapsed form reduces the full-bodied presence she had before she took up the life of a rock star to a fragile squiggle. Fanning and Stewart give arguably the best performances of their careers to date in THE RUNAWAYS, offering distinct portrayals of very different girls whose frisson ignites a minor rock revolution. Shannon offers his signature menace but didn’t really sell me on his version of Fowley. And, of course, the music is absolutely kickass. Some have called THE RUNAWAYS a coming-of-age story, but personal growth is not the point of rock music. THE RUNAWAYS lives where the music does—in emotion and rebellion. Co-presented by the Girlfriend Hours at Scarlet Bar. Come at 6:45pm for a special music video preshow. (2010, 106 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
John Carpenter’s BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 9pm
On their first meeting, the evil Lo Pan (James Hong) tells hunky truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell), “You are not brought upon this world to ‘get it’.” The thing about Jack’s cluelessness throughout BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA is that it’s actually an incredibly smart device, buoyed by an endlessly charming performance by Russell, who knows exactly how the character functions within the film. Jack’s a parody of an American action hero: he doesn’t know to take the safety off his gun, he repeats clever lines other characters already said earlier in the film. The story—about the supernatural war occurring underneath San Francisco’s Chinatown—isn’t about him at all: he’s incidental, just kind of there. But his incompetence coupled with a desire to receive a gambling debt from his friend, Wang (Dennis Dun), drags us into the fantastical world of the film. Whatever’s going on, he quickly decides he’s not going to miss out on the ride and, thus, neither are we. And what a ride. BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA is equally notable in that the story Jack falls into is also compelling, filled with characters deeply invested in sorcerer Lo Pan’s plan to release himself from an ancient curse. Aggressively plucky Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), for instance, is dedicated to uncovering the plot, along with Wang’s uncle, Egg Shen (Victor Wong), an old enemy of Lo Pan’s. Their scenes include smart and hilarious exposition, the film wholly self-aware of the tropes with which it’s engaging without being dismissive of the characters’ investment. Firing on all cylinders, it helps that BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA also looks so good. Dean Cundey’s cinematography is stylish without feeling too dated, highlighting the neon signs and darkened alleys of the film’s Chinatown. It also perfectly emphasizes the imposing action set pieces, and effective visual effects and practical monsters. The skill with which John Carpenter balances the fantasy/action/comedy elements in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA remains impressive, and as Jack rides off, waxing poetically to himself about his heroism at the end of the film, it’s easy to wish he’d soon stumble into another adventure so we can continue to tag along. Presented by Metal Movie Night, featuring a pre-party in the Music Box Lounge starting at 7pm with DJ Metal Vinyl Weekend spinning records and summoning spirits, The Gilty Pig food truck, plus vendor pop-up tables. The Metal Movie Night pre-show of classic trailers and metal videos starts at 8:45pm. (1986, 99 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
Akira Kurosawa's RAN (Japan)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 2pm and Monday, 12pm
RAN is a film of exile—conceived in it, consumed by it. After the critical and box office failure of DODES'KA'DEN (which is, in fairness, a candy-colored slog hopelessly attuned to its director's worst instincts), Kurosawa found his already-shaky position in the Japanese film industry collapse completely. Supplanted by younger, more radical directors, he had to turn to Mosfilm to underwrite DERSU UZALA and leaned upon grown-fanboys Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas to sponsor KAGEMUSHA. All the while Kurosawa was quietly planning RAN—borrowing elements from King Lear and the life of sixteenth-century warlord Mori Motonari for the script and painting storyboards for a film that he feared might never be shot. When French producer Serge Silberman came through with financing, RAN became the most expensive film in the history of the Japanese film industry, to the apparent indifference of Kurosawa's countrymen. Most every critic of RAN has noted a parallel between the 75-year-old Kurosawa and the aging warlord Hidetoro, and indeed, both preside over kingdoms teetering on the flaming brink. Legacies can be extinguished in an instant, but respect must be paid. RAN certainly has a homicidal stateliness about it; the film feels exquisitely brooded over, drained of all spontaneity, as if even the grey clouds had no choice in the matter. It plays closer to the operatic insularity of Tarkovsky's THE SACRIFICE than the CGI epics that would follow in its wake. It's definitely the last of its species. (1985, 162 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kyle A. Westphal]
Steven Spielberg's JAWS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, 9pm
If PSYCHO forever changed bathroom behavior, then JAWS no doubt gave us pause before diving head first into the ocean; but like the best horror movies, the film's staying power comes not from its superficial subject matter, in this case a mammoth, man-eating shark and the ominous abyss of the deep blue sea, but from the polysemic potential and wealth of latent meanings that these enduring symbols possess. JAWS marks a watershed moment in cinema culture for a variety of reasons, not excluding the way it singlehandedly altered the Hollywood business model by becoming the then highest grossing film of all time. A byproduct of such attention has been the sustained output of scholarly criticism over the years. At the time of its release, JAWS was interpreted as a thinly veiled metaphor for the Watergate scandal (an event that was slightly more conspicuous in the book), but since then a variety of readings have emerged, including socioeconomic and feminist analyses; however, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson may provide the most intriguing interpretation by connecting the shark to the tradition of scapegoating. Like Moby Dick or Hitchcock's titular birds, the shark functions as a sacrificial animal onto which we project our own social or historical anxieties (e.g., bioterrorism, AIDS, Mitt Romney). It allows us to rationalize evil and then fool ourselves into thinking we've vanquished it. But by turning man-made problems into natural ones we forget that human nature itself is corrupt, exemplified here by Mayor Vaughn who places the entire population of Amity Island in peril by denying the existence of the shark. Jameson's reading is in keeping with the way in which Spielberg rarely displays the shark itself (the result of constant mechanical malfunctions); as opposed to terrifying close-ups, we get point of view shots that create an abstract feeling of fear, thus evoking an applicable horror film trope: the idea is much more frightening than the image. JAWS is a timeless cautionary tale because it appeals to the deep-rooted fears of any generation. And because sharks are scary. Featuring a preshow by Miss Toto. (1975, 124 min, 35mm) [Harrison Sherrod]
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's THESE ENCOUNTERS OF THEIRS and DIALOGUE OF SHADOWS (Italy/Switzerland/France)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm
Nobody would accuse Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet of being overly sentimental. The duo’s flat, alien style is known more for its inaccessibility than its emotional core. Even still, some key works from their later period find the two adapting more poetic texts that allow for human emotions to creep into the rigor. Two such films, DIALOGUE OF SHADOWS (2013, 28 min, DCP Digital) and THESE ENCOUNTERS OF THEIRS (2006, 68 min, 35mm), share a program at Doc this week. THESE ENCOUNTERS OF THEIRS, a feature adapting Cesare Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucó, imagines dialogues between figures of Greek mythology as they wax about ethics and the nature of immortality. The filmmakers separate the film into five dialogues, naming each section for the actors doing the reading rather than the figures they’re playing, further abstracting Pavese’s text and giving each actor a non-specific omniscience. As is typical of Straub-Huillet, the film prioritizes the text itself by having both the camera and actors barely move, with every line read in a measured, accented sort of verse. While Pavese’s text has a broad focus, many of the dialogues feel like roundabout approaches to the concerns of Straub-Huillet’s materialist style. In the fifth section, two hunters consider their forebears and their relationship with the divine: “Those people knew too many things. With just a name, they told the stories of the cloud, the wood, the destinies. They saw surely what we know barely… They knew what things were,” says one, to which the other replies, “They spoke names, yes. So much so that at times I wonder which came first, things or those names." The trans-historical presentation (here, the men are carrying modern-day rifles) that occurs throughout Straub-Huillet’s filmography seems to collapse time such that all land and people become infinite and archetypal, searching for some common original signifier. This approach has a more tragic edge in the short work DIALOGUE OF SHADOWS, an adaptation of a Georges Bernanos short story that Straub and Huillet had planned to adapt early in their career but abandoned. After Huillet’s death in 2006, Straub eventually mounted the work as a solo project. Given its career-spanning nature, it’s hard not to map biographical detail onto the work, a dialogue between two lovers in which the woman (Cornelia Geiser) questions the man’s (Bertrand Brouder) desire to recreate their passion in writing. “Whatever happens, you’ll not be able to put our love in a book,” she warns him, before later acknowledging “it’s not me, it’s you who’ll get the better of my soul." The trees that surround them catch light and shadow in beautiful ways like in the other film, but the lovers' words, while poetically written, have a more mortal specificity than the Pavese dialogues; these are two people concerned less with divinity than they are with immediate, earthly desires. Whatever care they have for history is focused on their ability to be held in the hearts of others. To counter all the warm fuzzies, Straub composes his shots in an even more alienating way than usual, his actors seated and squeezed into the corner of the frame, reading most of their lines staring down at their script. But this Brechtian distancing makes way for a final shot that allows the two actors to finally make eye contact, a small gesture that carries the weight of decades-long creative and romantic partnership, one whose love language was a severe commitment to aesthetic principles. Screening as part of the History Lessons of Straub and Huillet series. [Maxwell Courtright]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Robert Altman's SHORT CUTS (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm
Robert Altman, the great purveyor of omnibus character dramas, reached a pinnacle of a self-styled form in 1993 with SHORT CUTS. Nominally based on nine of Raymond Carver's short stories and a poem ("Raymond Carver soup," as Altman once described it), SHORT CUTS consists of twenty-two L.A. locals who intersect in plots of Carver-esque realism. Where some of Altman's early films like NASHVILLE contained interwoven characters and narratives, these films felt less tightly controlled than SHORT CUTS. The freedom of those earlier films conjured an image of a director on his characters' level, deeply curious about them but indifferent to their choices and outcomes. (Contrast this with Paul Thomas Anderson's heavy-handed MAGNOLIA--a film greatly indebted to SHORT CUTS--where his characters are dealt one cynical blow after another.) Altman's evolution in SHORT CUTS shows more of the tinker--not necessarily superior to his characters but quietly orchestrating them to certain places on certain cues. Characters are less inclined to spontaneity and instead are freighted with a kismet (read: contrived) interconnectedness that is, more than less, natural for the world of the film. Disasters, natural and otherwise, touch everyone in the film and serve as unifying devices, providing thematic resonance to the characters' scattershot, middling lives. At three hours, SHORT CUTS is epic in scale and subject matter, showcasing Altman's brute force brilliance: it isn't always pretty, but damn if it doesn't work. Screening as part of the Board Picks series. (1993, 187 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]
Lee Chang-dong's POETRY (South Korea)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm
The evolution of Lee Chang-dong from storyteller to soothsayer has been one of the glories of contemporary movies. A former novelist (and high school teacher before that), Lee began his filmmaking career in the energetic, confrontational manner that's marked so much recent Korean cinema. His first films as director, GREEN FISH and PEPPERMINT CANDY, are cannily placed needles in the national nerve; but his third, OASIS, is a revelation, one of the watershed moments in South Korean cinema. A romance between disabled characters that's neither sentimental or schematic or flippantly unkind, it demonstrated how a curiosity about challenging social taboos (a near-constant in the Korean New Wave) could blossom into a study of humanity, period. It is one of the finest films ever made about the opposing forces of love and civic propriety. After a four-year stint as South Korea's Minister of Culture, Lee made SECRET SUNSHINE, a film about the inevitabilities of suffering and spiritual awakening that already seemed timeless shortly after its release. And then, POETRY. The main character, Mija (played by '60s Korean icon Yoon Jeong-hee, who came out of retirement for the role), is an elderly woman deprived, by circumstance, of companionship and anxious to rediscover life by learning to write poems. Like much of Lee's work, this sounds potentially maudlin, though the realization of the material is anything but. As in the case of Jeon Do-yeon's character in SECRET SUNSHINE, Lee reveals different facets of Mija's personality through impulsive, often furtive action without ever betraying an audience's initial impression of her. Combined with the narrative unpredictability that has defined the director's best work, the result is a multi-faceted film that is inseparable—formally as well as structurally—from its central character. Screening as part of the Driving Towards the End: An East Asian Perspective series. (2010, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
Takashi Miike’s ONE MISSED CALL (Japan)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
One of six features Takashi Miike directed in 2003, ONE MISSED CALL was the maverick filmmaker’s contribution to the early 2000s J-horror boom, arriving toward the end of a wave that had begun five years earlier with RINGU (1998). The film it most resembles is Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s PULSE (2001), not only in its premise of a supernatural force contacting people via cell phone messages, but in the offbeat camera setups and atmosphere of low-lying dread. In fact, it speaks to what a good mimic Miike can be that ONE MISSED CALL often feels like it was actually directed by Kurosawa and not just a pastiche of his work. By Miike standards, it’s fairly subdued, except when the characters are dying in gruesome ways, in which case the director lets his imagination go hog wild. (The non sequitur ending is also a characteristic touch.) With few exceptions, the director keeps his prankster side in check, advancing instead a Kurosawa-like ruminative seriousness. This allows the story, about a group of college friends who start receiving messages on their phones that foretell their deaths, to develop a thick air of morbidity that renders the deaths not just horrific but also unexpectedly sad. In contrast to PULSE, which tapped into general fears about what dark forces might be lurking within the internet, ONE MISSED CALL seems less concerned with reflecting anything in the real world, which makes it more remarkable that the film is as effective as it is. Credit that to Miike’s mastery of the horror genre—which he had previously demonstrated in AUDITION (1999) and films that aren’t horror but nonetheless very unnerving, like VISITOR Q and ICHI THE KILLER (both 2001). Miike knows when to present frightening detail versus when to suggest it; ONE MISSED CALL may be scariest when it plays on the viewer’s imagination. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (2003, 112 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Jack Hill’s SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 9:45pm and Wednesday, 4:15pm
“We’re the Jezebels!” The cry rings out like a tragic anthem—part battle cry, part declaration of sisterhood. For this gang of violent vixens, it’s a long, blood-stained road from being the Dagger Debs—not to be confused with D.E.B.S.—to becoming their own sovereign force. Jack Hill, whom Quentin Tarantino once dubbed the Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking, returns with SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, a gritty, pseudo-feminist action drama centered on teen gangs whose members all suspiciously look thirty. (Tarantino, ever the champion of cinematic underdogs, re-released the film under his short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures label.) Hill, who helped launch Pam Grier’s career with COFFY (1973) and FOXY BROWN (1974), shows here that it takes at least a dozen women to even approach Grier’s raw power. Without her iconic presence, SWITCHBLADE SISTERS turns instead to ensemble dynamics—portraying female strength not as singular charisma but as hard-won, often painful solidarity. Enter Maggie (Joanne Nail), the new girl in town, who immediately clashes with second-in-command Patch. Maggie takes her down in a flash, and with that, two paths emerge: one toward acceptance, the other toward betrayal. Patch becomes the film’s true villain—more insidious than the brutish Silver Daggers or their rival gang The Crabs. Based on Iago from Shakespeare’s Othello, Patch is driven not by hatred of Lace, the gang’s leader, but by avenging her embarrassment at the hands of Maggie. Like Iago, she weaponizes half-truths and whispered lies, unraveling the group from within. The Dagger Debs were formed as the female wing of the Silver Daggers, a dynamic not unlike the Pink Ladies in GREASE (1978). Lace believes she has love and protection in Dom, the Daggers’ leader, but he discards her, abuses her, and throws cash in her face for an abortion. He also sexually assaults Maggie. His eventual death may be accidental, but it’s nothing short of justice. Rather than embrace Maggie’s promise of solidarity, Patch spins her web of manipulation—convincing Lace that Dom had chosen Maggie as his new girl. Lace, wounded and furious, plots assassination and destruction. In true Shakespearean fashion, all of it—every wound, betrayal, and bloodstain—could’ve been avoided with one honest conversation. Among Hill’s filmography, SWITCHBLADE SISTERS stands out for its raw depiction of female camaraderie and conflict, set against a backdrop of urban gang warfare, roller rink shootouts, high school bathroom brothels, and Donna’s dad (Don Stark) from That ’70s Show. But the heart of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is Maggie. Her resilience and growing alliance with the Comrade Sisters—an echo of the Black Panthers—galvanize the gang. Together, they rise against the men who’ve tried to reduce them to property. It should’ve never come down to Maggie versus Lace. But ideologically, it always will. Lace’s self-worth comes from men’s adoration; Maggie sees the truth—the men are the problem. So here’s to the suffragette Jezebels, rebel queens of a crumbling empire. Their war cry still echoes: “Empowered women empower women.” Screening as part of the Alamo Time Capsule 1975 series. (1975, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Peter Weir's PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (Australia)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
In 1967, Australian author Joan Lindsay published her popular novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, and it soon provoked the belief that its subject is a true, but undocumented event. Eight years later, Peter Weir and screenwriter Cliff Green adapted the novel into Weir's second feature film to explore this new subject of national folklore. In the film, several young women and their teachers from Appleyard College picnic at Hanging Rock near Mount Macedon, Victoria on Saint Valentine's Day in 1900. During the afternoon, Irma, Marion, and Miranda quietly leave their classmates to further explore "the geological marvel," and they never return. In time, the disappearance of the girls leads to greater tragedy at the college. Similar to his contemporary Terrence Malick's attention to American landscapes, Weir focuses his camera on the natural landscape of the Australian bush and its dynamic animal and plant life. Often shot from varying low angles, Hanging Rock appears to be very powerful and possibly dangerous. It arrests the sight of the small men and women who climb its steep slopes in search of an answer. While many films encourage viewers to solve their mysteries, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK asks them to accept it. In contrast, the film's characters cannot face the unknown, and their reactions in turn obscure them from each other and from us. For Weir, Hanging Rock holds the last memory of Irma, Marion, and Miranda, yet no one can interpret what nature recounts. In the interview "Picnic under Capricorn" published shortly after the film's release, Weir described his uncommon aim: "We worked very hard at creating a hallucinatory mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions...There are, after all, things within our own minds about which we know far less than about the disappearances at Hanging Rock. And it's within a lot of those silences that I tell my side of the story." (1975, 115 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Candace Wirt]
Alain Guiraudie's MISERICORDIA (France)
FACETS – Thursday, 7pm
Alain Guiraudie, one of contemporary cinema's great regionalists—he documents rural life in the south of France as reliably as Bruno Dumont does in the country's northern enclaves—returns to his old stomping grounds with a sublime and slippery work that is generating an unexpected amount of buzz for the perennially unsung maven of pastoral surrealism. It is without a doubt the most attention Guiraudie's work has received since his 2013 breakthrough STRANGER BY THE LAKE, a minor masterpiece that was nonetheless notable for its eschewal of a number of his signature directorial flourishes, notably a certain proclivity for freewheeling absurdism and surrealistic diversion (Guiraudie's cinema represents, above all, a bracingly cold plunge into the murky waters of the unconscious mind) as well as an unspoken and wholly unquestioned pansexual thrust that renders his characters as potential romantic vectors for virtually anybody with whom they might cross paths. MISERICORDIA follows Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), a journeyman industrial baker, who leaves the modest city of Toulouse for the remote village of Saint-Martial to mourn the death of the town boulanger, under whom he apprenticed during his youth. As it turns out, Jérémie long harbored an unrequited love for the recently deceased baguette purveyor, although he might also be attracted to his newly widowed wife Martine (Catherine Frot) as well as their son Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) and perhaps a few other village inhabitants for good measure. Tensions rapidly escalate (with a singular, devastating act of violence looming on the horizon) as Jérémie settles into Vincent's childhood bedroom and indicates no desire to ever leave, having found himself swept up in comforting the grieving widow, foraging for wild mushrooms, and basking in the uneasy embrace of childhood nostalgia. That last part is crucial, as the film feels particularly raw and vulnerable; Guiraudie admitted as much in a recent Chicago Q&A, during which he explained that the film is a meditation on his own Catholic upbringing and a total exorcism of uneasy coming-of-age reminiscences, adding that he deliberately scouted a shooting locale that would be a dead ringer for his actual place of birth. MISERICORDIA is in part a film about the elaborate rituals and clandestine intensity that come with the territory of queer life, particularly for an emissary of an older generation like Guiraudie. Through all manner of cheeky allusions, the film explicitly links that constant sense of shame and dire need for secrecy to the Catholic faith. God loves you—in a way that is certainly quite gay—but you have blood on your hands, and you really ought to spend more time with the parish priest in order to allay some of that guilt. The film also posits, much like Thomas Wolfe, that you really can't go home again, lest you discover the town to be even smaller than you remember, or that your former friends are your friends no longer. Perhaps they've changed too much. You have definitely changed. Perhaps too much. (2024, 102 min, DCP Digital) [David Whitehouse]
Jonathan Demme's STOP MAKING SENSE (US/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – Friday, Midnight
In nearly every shot, STOP MAKING SENSE makes the case that Jonathan Demme was the greatest director of musical performance in American cinema. It isn't difficult to convey the joy of making music, but Demme's attention to the interplay between musicians (and, in some inspired moments, between the musicians and their crew) conveys the imagination, hard work, and camaraderie behind any good song. And, needless to say, the songs here are very, very good. By this point (the performances are culled from three concerts from 1983), Talking Heads were the headiest American band to achieve their degree of success, and they made the most of it, doubling their line-up to include back-up singers and a few instrumentalists from the golden years of George Clinton's Funkadelic. It's never openly acknowledged that the five new members are Black and the Heads are white; the sheer creativity of the music, which fuses everything from soul to traditional African rhythms to then-advanced electronic effects, is fully utopian in its spirit. (1984, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Andrew DeYoung’s FRIENDSHIP (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
There are moments where you almost feel bad for Craig Waterman, the chaotically average protagonist of Andrew DeYoung’s FRIENDSHIP, as he plods through life, struggling to maintain any kind of stable relationship, be it platonic, professional, or romantic. The problem, however, is that Craig is played by Tim Robinson, one of contemporary comedy’s premier lunatics, a man known for yelling, growling, and stink-facing his way through any and all social interactions to the point of sheer absurdity. Robinson’s comedic voice has solidified over the past decade, primarily through his Netflix sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave, but FRIENDSHIP represents something sharper and sadder, a prime leading-man vehicle for Robinson that wholly succeeds by keeping one foot firmly planted in crushing reality and the other maniacally flailing for its life. Stemming from the similar strains of comedic DNA that birthed last year’s RAP WORLD (2024)—along with sharing some of the same cast members—DeYoung’s debut feature is a potent examination of toxic masculine culture’s erosion of traditional male friendship dynamics, a system of aggression and dominance that leaves men like Craig with nowhere to turn but inward, toward chaos and anxiety and constant, unending fear. Craig’s seemingly voluntary isolation is put to the test when he meets his new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd, making a triumphant return to theatrical comedy after years in the Marvel superhero desert), an effortlessly cool and collected weatherman who takes Craig under his nurturing wing of friendship by way of adventures like exploring the underground sewer system and foraging for mushrooms. Naturally, things go the way of FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) as Austin realizes that, to put it simply, Craig’s just not that great of a hang. The repercussions of this friend break-up prove fatal, as Craig’s feelings of inadequacy infect every facet of his pathetically mundane existence, most notably his relationship with his oft-neglected wife, Tami (a brilliantly committed Kate Mara, in what might otherwise be a thankless role). Whenever the overall structure of FRIENDSHIP threatens to become nothing more than loosely collected sketches, each scene evolves into a deeper dive into Craig, a character brought to life by Robinson’s gripping traits as a performer, his physical and emotional instincts birthing new expressions of comedic id and ego with every passing moment that oscillate between hilarious and nightmarish (of particular note, a mid-film sequence centered around a drug trip unlocks newfound vistas of comedic potential I never thought possible). It would be unfair to reveal the specifics of FRIENDSHIP’s final scenes, but DeYoung and co. let this tale of unrequited brotherhood lead to its logical conclusion, where loose ends tie up in the most rip-roaring fashion possible, and Craig—for better or worse—learns what it means to be a friend. (2025, 100 mins, 35mm or DCP Digital [see website for format]) [Ben Kaye]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s 2017 film SYLVIO (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of Weird Wednesday. More info here.
⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Temporal Territories: Indigenous Experimental Cinema with filmmakers Lindsay McIntyre & Adam Piron of COUSIN Collective takes place Thursday, 7pm, followed by a post-screening conversation with McIntyre and Piron. More info here.
⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
Ulrike Ottinger’s 1979 film TICKET OF NO RETURN (108 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 7pm, presented in collaboration with the Goethe-Institute Chicago as part of the Berlin Nights series.
Jon Silver’s 2024 film THE PREMIERE (81 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 7pm, with Silver in attendance for a Q&A after the screening. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Chicago Film Society
Skin, Inscribed – Contemporary Brazilian Hand-Processed Films screen Friday, 8pm, with Tetsuya Maruyama in person. RSVP required to attend. More info here.
⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station
Comfort Film presents Codec Collapse, curated by Sky Goodman, on Wednesday at 7pm. Free admission. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
A preview of Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton’s 2024 film 7 WALKS WITH MARK BROWN (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm, and Creton’s 2017 film VA, TOTO! (94 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 2pm.
A program of Six Films by Robert Beavers (2000-2022, Total approx. 85 min, 16mm) screens Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Encounters in the Cinema series. More info about all screenings here.
⚫ FACETS
Eva Aridjis Fuentes’ 2025 documentary GOODBYE HORSES: THE MANY LIVES OF Q LAZZARUS (103 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 9pm, following FACETS free film trivia at 7pm. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Fuentes, led by Chicago-based artist and writer Bianca Xunise. Please note this screening is SOLD OUT. More info here.
⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
Expanded Cinema: Proximity, an outdoor site-specific projection, takes place Friday at approximately 8pm/sunset. Screening to take place in the Logan Center Courtyard, with projections on the Logan Center Tower. More info.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Laura Piani’s 2025 film JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE (94 min, DCP Digital)
begins screening this week, and a 4K DCP digital restoration of Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN (1966, 102 min) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
The National Theatre Live production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Max Webster, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Isaac Gale, Ryan Olsen, and David McMurry’s 2024 film SWAMP DOGG GETS HIS POOL PAINTED (95 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Shinichiro Ueda’s 2017 horror film ONE CUT OF THE DEAD (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday and Saturday, 11:45pm, as part of the Shudder Anniversary Selects series.
Professor O’s Producing Festival #4 - Movies with a Message! takes place Saturday at 11am. Programmed and presented by John Otterbacher.
Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult classic THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight. Every screening has a shadowcast of the film (that’s actors acting in front of the screen during the film) performed by Midnight Madness. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Tone Glow
Tone Glow presents Little Histories: The Films of Greta Snider, a two-program retrospective of the Bay Area filmmaker, including 3D dual-projected works, on Friday, 7pm, at Public Works Gallery (2141 W. North Ave.), followed by a Q&A with Snider. More info here.
⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Selections from the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, in conjunction with the announcement of the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive Collection, streams free on VDB TV. More info here.
CINE-LIST: May 23, 2025 - May 29, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jason Halprin, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Harrison Sherrod, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Brian Welesko, K.A. Westphal, David Whitehouse, Candace Wirt