Highlights of the final week of the 13th European Union Film Festival at Siskel include Bruno Dumont’s “Hadewijch,” (Sat, Wed) and Jacques Rivette’s “Around a Small Mountain” (Sun-Mon). Dumont’s provocations have ranged from the murders of “L’humanite” to the sex-crazed “Twenty-nine Palms,” yet there’s something in his latest, a study of the boundaries of belief and fanaticism in Europe today, seen through the eyes of a teenage girl shunned from becoming a nun, who takes up with other religions in unexpected ways. Dumont delivers potent shocks, but the most potent aspect of all is his attention to faces and to light: I’m not sure about the coherence of the underlying ideas, but the images are filled with mystery and concentration. Eighty-year old Jacques Rivette’s “Around A Small Mountain,” runs hardly eighty minutes, and its slightness echoes his lifelong fascination with acting and role-playing. The last shot placidly observes as a full moon is slowly occluded by glaucous clouds: the clouding of sight, memory, the pulling of a final curtain. There’s also a repeat of Peter Bagh’s “Helsinki Forever” (Sun), memorable a poetic city symphony and cinema-essay, drawing on archival and fictional footage of the surprisingly much-observed location. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
Film 50 2022: SELECTORS—Programmers & Festival Producers Behind the scenes of what constitutes "film"—industry and community, in Chicago and the Midwest—is circle upon circle, an ecstasy of Venn diagrams…programmers shaping history by presenting vital work.
Talking Screens: A Week In Chicago Film, March 12-18, 2021 OPENERS How condensed do you want your Almodóvar? In thirty taut minutes, the Spanish writer-director burrows inside Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play, “The Human Voice,” with Tilda Swinton as his physical and psychological blade. Studio-confined during pandemic days, it’s brightly, boldly interior in every way. Music Box Theatre; shown with Almodóvar’s 1988 breakthrough, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”…
