POST TENEBRAS LUX (Carlos Reygadas) PREVIEW

[Chris Knipp]

Carlos Reygadas: POST TENEBRAS LUX (2012) - PREVIEW

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Opening sequence of POST TENEBRAS LUX

Controversial winner of the Director's Prize at Cannes last year (Reygadasp previous film SILENT LIGHT (NYFF 200 (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2121-New-York-Film-Festival-2007&p=18549#post18549)7) won the Palme d'Or in 2007 and Filmleaf review will come when this opens theatrically in the US May 1. From Strand releasing. I have watched this thanks to them and it's mind-blowing. Whether or not it makes any sense, or is wildly self-indulgent, which one can certainly argue, it's the kind of bold, strange film that opens you up to imaginative possibilities, sort of like Shane Carruth's new UPSTREAM COLOR, except UPSTREAM COLOR makes a lot more coherent sense when you sit down and figure it out, but doesn't seem as unexpected and risky. I refer you to Mike D'Angelo's AV Club review (http://www.avclub.com/articles/cannes-2012-day-eight-the-director-of-silent-light,75619/) last May from Cannes because I like the way D'Angelo considers pros and cons. I have also watched a live discussion of it (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/24/post-tenebras-lux-review) on the Guardian website following Philip French's negative review (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/24/post-tenebras-lux-review-french), Xian Brooks' ditto (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/24/post-tenebras-lux-review), and Peter Bradshaw's more favorable one. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/21/post-tenebras-lux-review) Below is all material from Strand Releasing.

Strand Releasing is pleased to present POST TENEBRAS LUX, winner of the Best Director prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, beginning Wednesday, May 1 at Film Forum (NY) and Friday, May 31 at The Cinefamily (LA). The film is the latest feature by acclaimed director Carlos Reygadas, whose previous films, SILENT LIGHT and JAPON, opened at Film Forum in 2009 and 2003, respectively. Ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, POST TENEBRAS LUX ("light after darkness") is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas's real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals loudly circle as thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers' bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, POST TENEBRAS LUX palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition. — Mike Maggiore, Programmer, Film Forum

“Entrancingly beautiful. As beguiling a cinematic object as one is likely to encounter this year. A personal work in which autobiographical content is lyrically transfigured and elevated to cosmic heights… It amounts to watching the dissolution of the boundary between life and art, through a glass darkly.”
– Dan Sullivan, Film Comment

“Impressionistic and tantalizing. A film that is neither obviously avant-garde nor narratively approachable, but a dizzying, and often exhilarating synthesis of both modes. Vividly beautiful photography… the film feels genuinely, bracingly experimental.”
– Jonathan Romney, Screen International

POST TENEBRAS LUX (2012, 115 mins.) Written and Directed by Carlos Reygadas. Produced by Jaime Romandia, Jean Labadie, Frans van Gestel, Arnold Heslenfeld. Cinematography: Alexis Zabé. Editor: Natalia López. Cast: Adolfo Jiménez Castro (Juan), Nathalia Acevedo (Nathalia), Willebaldo Torres ("Seven"), Rut Reygadas (Rut), Eleazar Reygadas (Eleazar). Mexico / France / Germany / The Netherlands. In Spanish, English and French with English subtitles. Strand Releasing.

SYNOPSIS:
POST TENEBRAS LUX (“light after darkness”), ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, POST TENEBRAS LUX palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition. — Mike Maggiore, Programmer, Film Forum
CAST:
Adolfo Jiménez Castro
Nathalia Acevedo
Willebaldo Torres
Rut Reygadas
Eleazar Reygadas

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Poster by Nashville-based graphic artist
and musician Sam Smith

[Chris Knipp]

NYC opening of Reygadas' film today:

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POST TENEBRAS LUX
Wed, May 1 - Tues, May 14
1:00 3:45 6:30 9:15

Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the new film from acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas (JAPÓN, SILENT LIGHT) is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family after their move to the Mexican countryside. OPENS TODAY!

"CRITICS PICK. Mesmerizing, mysterious, willfully perverse… It’s a male psychodrama cum family-man meltdown… a deeply personal, intermittently hermetic exploration of innocence and sin, good and evil…"
- Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Click here (http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/movies/post-tenebras-lux-directed-by-carlos-reygadas.html?_r=0)to read the full review.

"A MASTERPIECE. Casts a strange and powerful spell."
- Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

WATCH TRAILER (http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/post_tenebras_lux#trailer)

Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., New York, NY 10014

[Chris Knipp]

Preview of an interview with Carlos Reygadas (http://www.cineaste.com/articles/the-impossible-becomes-reality-an-interview-with-carlos-reygadas-preview)by VARIETY film critic Robert Koehler. To read the interview you are invited to buy a copy of the current issue (summer 2013) or subscribe to CINEASTE magazine.

The Impossible Becomes Reality: An Interview with Carlos Reygadas (Preview)

by Robert Koehler

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One of the unexpected results of the CGI revolution in cinema digital effects, and one of the least noticed, is how the tools have allowed filmmakers with personal, independent voices to create images and sequences that they may have previously envisioned but couldn’t have managed to actually make. Near the end of Still Life (2006), Jia Zhangke crafts a stunning shot in which a ship incongruously lifts off from the Yangtze River valley floor, scrambling the viewer’s sense of present and future, to say nothing of the impossible. Throughout Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Apichatpong Weerasethakul creates a gaggle of startling, haunting, and amusingly fantastic images, from the now-iconic red-eyed monkey men who revisit their living relatives from the dead, to a princess’s lovemaking with a fish, to an apartment with doppelgängers. Word has it that Lisandro Alonso may have some (possibly digital) images made for his upcoming, still-untitled film starring Viggo Mortensen set in the Argentine desert in the 1860s.

In Post Tenebras Lux, (translated from Latin as “After Darkness Light”), Carlos Reygadas has expanded his range of stylistic and thematic concerns but, along with this, he has deployed digital tools for scenes that explode the veneer of conventional realism and startled audiences who viewed the film in its premiere in Cannes last year, when Reygadas survived a volley of sharply negative reviews to win the Best Director prize.

For the rest of this preview go here. (http://www.cineaste.com/articles/the-impossible-becomes-reality-an-interview-with-carlos-reygadas-preview)

Copyright © 2013 by Cineaste Publishers, Inc.

And another thing from Cineaste online: This is old, but worth a look. A questionnaire answered by pioneer film blog critics about what the Internet means to film criticism and to their careers all that. http://www.cineaste.com/articles/film-criticism-in-the-age-of-the-internet.htm

And the have a "next generation" sequel: http://www.cineaste.com/articles/film-criticism-the-next-generation.