Highly influenced by Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amor, Danielle Arbid’s PASSION SIMPLE is a sublime study in erotic obsession.Helene is a literature professor in Paris researching a book on Aphra BehnShe has begun an affair with a younger man, a Russian, who may or not be a spy. What she does know is that he is married.
Not that seems to matter much. What matters is hot and heavy sex at every opportunity. Sinewy, sweaty, skin abrasion sex.
Director Danielle Arbid must have had the film’s intimacy coach working overtime as her camera lingers long over limbs, breasts, pelvic thrusts and heaving bottoms.
Out of the bedroom, the film takes us to the streets of Paris, Venice and Moscow, to the accompaniment of songs by Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen and Yazoo.
An examination of the exhilaration and excitement of infatuation, of giving oneself over to absolute pleasure and the debilitating consequences that can accompany obsessive compulsive behavior, PASSION SIMPLE is a triumph for female lead, Laetitia Dosch, the embodiment of physical ecstasy and emotional agony.
PASSION SIMPLE plays Randwick Ritz Nov 5 and Event George Nov 9
Success is a great seducer in SLALOM.
Noée Abita is Lyz Lopez, a fifteen year old aspiring Olympic skier.
Her trainer is forty year old Fred played by Jeremie Renier.
He is a tough taskmaster, she is a determined and talented athlete. Their training sessions are intense. They are constantly in each other’s physical and mental space.
With recent allegations concerning inappropriate behaviour between coaches and their young charges, SLALOM is as contemporary as Covid and just as insidious.
In the rarefied world of elite sports, passions unarguably are pushed to extremes, but part of competing and winning is discipline, and coaches must instil that without bullying and practise self discipline as a matter of course.
Noée Abita is dazzling as Lyz, burgeoning into adulthood while simultaneously blossoming into a champion skier. The confidence builds in her achievements as a sportswoman but there remains a fragility in her fledgling sexuality, an awakening taken wantonly advantage of by the predatory Fred.
Abita embodies both the confusions and contradictions of adolescence and the commitment of the apex athlete. She has an incandescent quality that is mesmerising.
Writer and director, Charlène Favier has made a timely and beautiful film about the slippery slope of people in power not taking stock of their consequences when overstepping the boundaries of intimacy with those under their charge.
The paradox of preparing for the podium and grooming from a pedestal is put under the microscope, the predicament of emprise, where one person holds power or influence over another, examined.
There is no doubt that Lyz has power over Fred too, but as the adult, he needs to get a grip. His capitulation to copulate with his protege amounts to base narcissism
See it at SFF Hayden Orpheum 8.30 Weds 10/11 or On Demand from Friday12/11
Set in Aspropyrgos, a north west coastal suburb of Athens, GREEN SEA is an unforgettable film about an amnesiac.
Anna has no idea who she is but she knows she can cook. Her olfactory powers and muscle memory for memorable meals have not deserted her and her culinary capabilities deliver her to caravan dwelling proprietor of a run down taverna, the reclusive Roula.
Before you can boil an egg, Anna has transformed the taverna from a greasy spoon to a cuisine celebre, cooking up a storm with a menu that awakens the dormant taste buds of a nostalgic clientele.
Angeliki Papoulia as Anna and Yannis Tsortekis as Roula make an unlikely couple, but his lack of table manners and her flair for cooking merge in a resurrection for both of them.
Music and meals exercise the memory muscles of these two people, each adrift from their pasts, the taverna turned into a transit lounge for each of them, attracting fellow passengers with equally indeterminate destinations.
Anna’s meals make the taverna a mecca for a myriad of blue collar workers, men and women who have gravitated to the area from far flung parts of Greece, the traditional recipes rekindling memories of homes and families left.
GREEN SEA screening Sunday November 14 at Chauvel or on demand from SFF from Friday November 12
Flexipasses and subscriptions to Sydney Film Festival 2021 are on sale now.
Call 1300 733 733 or visit sff.org.au for more information.