Return to Form

The swinging sixties clashes with Soviet strictness under the auspices of Marlen Khutsiev, a lesser known Russian auteur, a one-man Russian new wave. We review Ilych’s Gate (1965), its more popular re-cut I Am Twenty (1988), and its flirty follow-up July Rain (1968). Watch out for obnoxious laddish banter, not just from the boys, but from a young Andrei Tarkovsky, whose callous cameo nearly steals the show.

“Eros and Thanatos, sitting in a tree”, fumbling, groping, and pulling away. This is the psycho-sexual world offered to us by French auteur Catherine Breillat; a controversial figure in European cinema, both celebrated and castigated for her “shock jock and cock-block” sensibility. In a career that has truly spanned the decades, Breillat has cast an unwavering eye at the subjects of sex and desire, of violence and power. This week, the boys go eyes deep; taking a long, hard look at two of her most notorious films: A Real Young Girl (1976) and Fat Girl (2001), with digressions towards Romance, Bluebeard, 36 Fillette and Anatomy of Hell. But could they keep (it) up?

Hello, hello, hello, what's all this then? A disappearance, on an Italian island, and the waves that this disappearance makes - and does not make - among a very loosely knit group of bourgeois 'friends'? Why, it's Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. A film that divided its critics, and then united them (a bit like Italy itself, really). But is it good, actually? Unsurprisingly, yes - yes it is. The boys explain why. Plus, a preview of the new cringey Fassbinder biopic 'Enfant Terrible'.

Adam Curtis is back with ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ perhaps his most ambitious documentary series, an emotional history of the modern world, a rich tapestry of complex protagonists and a lot of moody archive and electronic music. Were the boys intellectually energised or did they overdose on the Curtis Kool-Aid?

This week, the boys wade through the slow anthropological cinema of Ben Rivers - a man obsessed with society and those who live at its edges. A hunchback, a musician, a salty old sailor - a hippie with a finger in his arsehole. Expensively shot, intellectually minded, and glacially paced, are Ben's banks bursting, or do these Rivers run dry? The boys review A Spell to Ward off the Darkness, Slow Action and The Hunchback.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from? ‘Austria’ you might say, especially if, like Owen and Ralph you’ve spent the past week watching the films of Ulrich Seidl. Whether it’s the mail order bride-doom of The Last Real Men, the heavy petting of Animal Love or the subaltern sex tourism of Paradise Love - Seidl dignifies these desperate souls with attention and acceptance.

In Lux Aeterna, art-house ingénue Gaspar Noé tackles the dynamics, egos, and erotics of cinema itself; turning the lens on his own (literally) pulsating practice. In a tight 50 minutes, the French-Argentinian filmmaker dissects a failing film set filled with inflated egos and questionable ethics. But is this aesthetically-charged and critically-toothed survey of cinema just another pretentious pump and dump, or is it something deeper? The boys decide.

A lone boy is jolted into manhood by the tribulations and traumas of WW2 in Eastern Europe. This is the premise of both Come and See (1985) and The Painted Bird (2019). The boys dig into this deadly double bill with fighting spirit, and find the fine line between epic and exploitation.

This week, the boys are joined by the pod’s weird-suburbia correspondent Daniel Neofetou to discuss Ham on Rye, an unsettling meal comprised of adolescent yearning, unspoken ritual, and a side of small-town ennui. Fancy a bite?

Ralph introduces Owen to one of his favourite films, The Hourglass Sanatorium by Wojciech Has, an exuberant but mournful dream journey, transcending linear time and reconciling personal relationships with collective trauma.