This episode, quadruple-threat filmmaker Isabel Sandoval talks to Slim and Gemma about cinematic edging, sensual slapstick, nuns on screen, modern Filipino cinema, Verhoeven’s camp supremacy, audience blue balls, and, of course, her four Letterboxd favorites: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Jeanne Dielman, In the Mood for Love and Punch-Drunk Love. Slim, meanwhile, googles “French New Wave” while Gemma pours yet another coffee. Isabel wrote, directed, edited and starred in Lingua Franca, and more recently the sensual short Shangri-La.
The Letterboxd list of films mentioned in this episode
Isabel’s Sensual Cinema essay
French New Wave
Criterion on Letterboxd
Criterion’s list of Questioning Love
Lists featuring Hiroshima Mon Amour: 90 minutes or less / Directors visit Japan / Conversations on Film / Memory and Yearning / Socialism and leftism / Atomic weapons / Horny
Ave’s review of Lingua Franca
Adam Kempenaar’s review of Jeanne Dielman
Lists featuring In the Mood for Love: Fills the void / Soft & slow / Loneliness in neon cities
Isabel’s Top 10 Criterion picks / Closet picks
Isabel’s review of A New Leaf
Letterboxd’s Halfway 2021This episode was recorded in Pennsylvania and Auckland, and edited by Slim. Our theme music is ‘Vampiros Dancoteque’, by film and television composing trio Moniker. Transcript by Sophie Shin.