Renate Reinsve

Backrooms

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A horribly distorted Clark in pirate attire

It’s notable that both Kane Parsons, who directed Backrooms, and Curry Barker, of Obsession fame, started their film-making careers on YouTube making scary shorts. They’ve both come up with what are often described as the best horror movies of the year. In the case of Obsession that’s clearly true: there’s much screaming, ick and yuk. But what about Backrooms, and its psychologically chilly commentary on the bleakness of everyday existence in the urban environment? Parsons says he was majorly influenced by the video game Portal, and his intro – a first person “player” running around a puzzle-platform scenario – makes that obvious. We’re inside a vast empty succession of empty rooms with a … Read more

Sentimental Value

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Father Gustav and daughter Nora

Imagine a standing ovation lasting for 19 minutes – enough time to have a bath. That’s what Sentimental Value got when it was shown at Cannes. Where, admittedly, they like this sort of thing – European, dense, non-genre, self-referential, serious, full of unsympathetic characters and recalling auteurs of the past. Bergman most obviously, and Persona in particular, a high point in his career of high points. There is a story, though it’s a jumping-off point for a series of meditations rather than a plot. After their mother dies, two sisters, Nora and Agnes, are slightly surprised and perturbed when estranged father, a cinema auteur whose best days are probably behind him, re-appears. Gustav, it … Read more

The Worst Person in the World

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Renate Reinsve

The Worst Person in the World is not about the worst person in the world, though it’s a good catchy title and so why not? Instead it’s about something that’s not so easy a sell – how to live the good life. The latest in a 20-year run of collaborations between director Joachim Trier and regular writing partner (and a director in his own right) Eskil Vogt, it follows dense, layered and intense films like Thelma, Louder Than Bombs and Blind with more of the same in a 12-chapter story about a smart, pretty young woman called Julie. At the end of each of Julie’s 12 steps she’s traded in what she had … Read more