Date night at the Chicago International Film Festival
Degree of Difficulty: Impossible
Wine pairing: Palinka, the Hungarian fruit brandy drunk in small quantities to momentarily stave off the bitter, monotonous routine of your daily existence.
Summary: I think this trailer pretty much sums up the feeling of the entire date film, a 146-minute mood piece in in which two unnamed characters eat potatoes, struggle to open and close doors against the wind and live out their lives in isolation and hardship in a barren landscape not unlike parts of the Midwest.
Not even my watermelon costume could set the mood after that, which I say in complete tribute to the filmmaker, who managed to make each minute of his characters' lives so unredeemably miserable that the minute before seems like good times, not unlike living with teenagers.
Personally I would think that the watermelon costume would be such a shining beacon of hope in the face of a film like this that Mr. SK wouldn't be able to keep his hands off you. But that just goes to show you what I know about angsty eastern European cinema and its relative position vis a vis humble produce. (However, I would be glad to write you an abstract for a scholarly article on the subject, so long as you appreciate terms such as mise en scene.)
Posted by: MommyTime | October 14, 2011 at 11:15 AM
Subtitles? Tell me there were subtitles.
Inga: You have eaten all the cabbage.
Jan: I do not like cabbage.
Inga: Even so, you have eaten all the cabbage. Now we will surely starve.
Jan: Death is at our door. He seeks cabbage.
Inga: We have none to give him.
Jan: Perhaps we can give him watermelon instead.
Inga: The watermelon all was taken by sarcastic suburban mommy bloggers for use in ironic pictures meant to illustrate their bourgeoisie midwestern sexual disaffection.
Jan: Then we will die
Posted by: Suburban Sheepdog | October 14, 2011 at 01:45 PM
Mostly there was wind, and music so forlorn it is a wonder people did not kill themselves right there in the theater. It really was a fine bit of angsty Eastern European filmmaking. But would a little bourgeois sexual innuendo have been so wrong? And some sun?
SK
Posted by: Suburban Kamikaze | October 14, 2011 at 02:49 PM