Next time...it's a comedy

I don't think that the cinematography in a film has ever made me feel sick before. Today was a first.

In the Italian saga I am Love. the steadicam roars around the vast millionaire mansion villa of the Recchi family in a nausea inducing homage to the museum scene in Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill....so much so in fact that I literally had the urge to vomit, which I am sure is not quite the effect that director Luca Guadagnino was looking for.

Having said this, Guadagnino has crafted a stylish, almost Hitchcockian family saga which centres around a doomed love affair of the rather controlled matriarch, Russian ex pat Emma, (Tilda Swinton)....the camera swoons around her sketchily drawn family like a swallow around a field, and I found the cinematic themes of passion and food (the scene where Swinton eats a prawn has to be seen to be believed!) interesting but all rather cold and with characters devoid of any warmth.

I gave it 7/10

Our second film of the day, as it turned out, was not a bag-of-laughs either!

The Headless Woman (La Mujer sin Cabeza) is an odd unsettling little film about denial, guilt and I suspect concussion!

In it , a wealthy middle aged dentist Veronica (Maria Onetto) runs "something" over on an Argentinian back dirt road. In the accident she strikes her head on the windscreen, and enters a slightly opaque, ever-so-quiet-senseless world where nothing may be what it seems.

Veronica may or may not have killed a child (a ghostly handprint on her car's window is left chillingly just in view) but any concrete clue of what indeed did happen is quietly camoflagued by subtle confusion which mirrors that hard smile paranoia exhibited by those with a head injury.

It is not an easy film to sit through and for me it is far too long, but it is a film that provokes thought and discussion........Having said that, I don't think it is the masterpiece that some in the artistic press would have us believe....it is just not that clever

7/10

Hazel and I felt a little wrung out after our movie double bill....... we agreed next time we would see something a little more uplifting next time......two challenging, slightly depressing movies in one day is a little too much!!!