Synopsis: A woman is committed to a mental institution after her baby drowns while her sailor husband is away. He is now a janitor at the asylum. Their adult daughter is about to marry but is worried about her fiancé’s reaction to her mother’s madness. She visits the asylum and is surprised to find her…
Tag: Analysis
Kukuli (Movie) – Summary, Analysis
Summary: Kukuli, a young llama herder lives a simple life with her grandparents high in the Andean mountains of Paucartambo, in the countryside of Cuzco. She leaves to attend the annual Feast of Mamacha Carmen in the town of Paucartambo. On the way she meets Alaku, a mestizo who has lost his land. He seduces…
Kolya (Kolja) – Summary, Analysis
Summary: In the summer months before the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution of 1989, the 60- something František Louka (Sveˇrák) augments his meagre income as a politically suspect cellist in a funeral ensemble by touching up the gold leaf lettering on Prague gravestones. He begins an affair with the singer Klára (Šafránková) and also agrees to marry…
Jamon, Jamon – Synopsis & Analysis
Synopsis: José Luis is an executive at his parents’ underwear factory where his girlfriend Silvia works on the shop floor. When Silvia falls pregnant, José Luis promises her that he will marry her, most likely against the wishes of his parents. His mother is determined to break her son’s engagement to a girl from a…
It Happened One Night (1934) – Summary, Analysis
Summary: In his book about Hollywood screenwriters, Talking Pictures (1975), the critic Richard Corliss suggested you could summarise the plot of this film in a single headline couched in the style of its reporter-hero: ‘Star Reporter Trails and Nails Heiress – for Life’. On the run from her wealthy father (Walter Connolly) who disapproves of…
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956): Summary & Analysis
Summary: A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates. Analysis: As both a tale concerning invading alien pods and a stark critique of small-town America, Invasion of the Body Snatchers stands as a significant US film; whether it is considered merely a low-budget science fiction B…
Kings Of The Road (1976): Summary & Analysis
Summary: In a pre-title conversation between Bruno, a travelling film projector engineer, and the elderly de-Nazified owner of cinema, the film cuts to Robert, a newly separated depressed paediatric psychologist, who is driving his iconic Volkswagen Beetle at high speed into a West German border lake. Surviving the half-hearted suicide attempt he hitches a lift…
If… (Movie) – Summary, Analysis
Summary: Travis, Knightly and Wallace routinely defy the traditions and Establishment values of their public school. In an attempt to bring them into line, they are beaten viciously by head prefect, Rowntree. This triggers an increasingly surreal series of episodes culminating in an attack from the rooftops with automatic weapons on parents, dignitaries, and boys…
Idioterne / The Idiots – Summary, Analysis
Summary: Following a chance encounter in a local restaurant, a lonely woman named Karen (Jørgensen) meets a group of people known as the ‘idiots’, a collective whose aim is to challenge bourgeois social norms and to expose middle-class pretensions and hypocrisies. The group members undergo a procedure known as ‘spassing’ – in which they mimic…
In The Mood For Love – Summary & Analysis
Summary: In Hong Kong, 1962, Su Li-zhen, Chow Mo-wan and their respective partners rent rooms in adjacent flats. The two gradually become aware that Li-zhen’s husband is having an affair with Mo-wan’s wife and begin to seek solace in each other’s company. They work through their shared pain by roleplaying scenarios, such as imagining how…