Monday, August 28, 2006

edinburgh film festival 8/27 FINAL!!!!

The Ring Finger (L'Annulaire)
Diane Bertrand / France & Germany / 2005 / 100 min
Olga Kurylenko, Marc Barbé, Stipe Erceg, Edith Scob

24097
A fairytale for grown-ups - complete with a big, bad wolf.
After almost losing a finger in an accident on a factory assembly line, Iris visits a mysterious 'institute' to be treated. Once there, she's invited to take a job assisting the unnamed doctor (Marc Barbé) as he transforms his patients' severed limbs into 'specimens': afloat in formaldehyde, ready for display, as if in a museum. One day, he suggests she begin wearing some red high-heeled pumps ... and then things really get strange. Adapted from a cult novel by Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa, this erotic reverie inhabits the same surreal realm as the films of David Lynch and Walerian Borowczyk, and provokes the same delicious sense of beguilement and unease. Starring possibly the world's most beautiful woman, Ukrainian-born former model Olga Kurylenko, it's a haunting journey into the subconscious.

SUMMER PALACE(頤和園) REVIEW

24399

Sheitan
Kim Chapiron / France / 2006 / 95 min
Vincent Cassel, Olivier Barthelemy, Roxane Mesquida, Nicolas Le Phat Tan, Leïla Bekhti , Ladj Ly, Julie Marie Parmentier, Leïla Bekhti

24149
Can you play Le Marsellaise on duelling banjos?


A night out clubbing in Paris takes a nasty turn for three friends (one Vietnamese, one African, one French), when they accept the invitation of the beautiful Eve (A Ma Soeur's Roxanne Mesquida) to visit her house in the country. Once there, they're the focus of some Deliverance-style shenanigans from the inbred locals, all overseen by the bewhiskered, manically grinning Joseph (Vincent Cassel, in a scene-stealing performance), who soon takes an inexplicable shine to the one white member of the gang... A slow-burn chiller, this nasty debut feature ramps up the sex, violence, humour (and yes, it is funny) and general insanity to truly disturbing levels. 'The ending is way out there', said Variety, and that's an understatement. Put it this way: A Year in Provence, this ain't.

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