Authors — Peter Bowen
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Uncovering The Hysterical Accuracy In A Dangerous Method
In our Fall 2011 cover interview with David Cronenberg about his film A Dangerous Method (which will be online for the first time later this week), we asked about the use of historical documentation in replicating Freud’s period. One of the most interesting notes was his use of the film and photographs of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot in recreating the condition of hysteria as seen in Keira Knightley‘s character. Filmmaker: Jean-Martin Charcot, who was Freud’s mentor, had photographically documented hysterical women. Cronenberg: That’s right. There was silent film of the era that we watched at that time. On […]
by Peter Bowen on Nov 20, 2011 -
Andrew Haigh Weekend
Set in the stark middle-of-nowhere town of Nottingham, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend tells a love story that is destined never to happen. Russell (Tom Cullen), a gay man who works as a lifeguard at the local municipal pool, had no real plans for the weekend: Hang out with his straight friends on Friday, work on Saturday, go to his goddaughter’s birthday party on Sunday. That was before he picked up Glen (Chris New) at a gay club Friday night, and the two fall — at first warily, and then headlong — into a romance with an expiration date. On Sunday […]
by Peter Bowen on Sep 21, 2011 -
The Mourning After: Tom Ford on A Single Man
The following first appeared in Filmmaker‘s Winter 2010 edition. —Editor Although fashion and film have always been closely intertwined, Tom Ford may be the first fashion designer to cross over to the role of filmmaker. To be sure, his debut feature, an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, reflects his immaculate sense of style. But its story, a melancholy tale of a day in the life of a middle-aged college professor (Colin Firth) who is still mourning the unexpected death of his longtime lover Jim (Matthew Goode), is a far cry from the sex-saturated tableaus that Ford created for […]
by Peter Bowen on Dec 1, 2010 -
Poetry in Motion
by Peter Bowen on Oct 25, 2010 -
FRANÇOIS OZON, “HIDEAWAY”
Ten years ago, François Ozon’s dark, Hitchcock-tinged melodrama See the Sea caught the attention of American film critics. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin marked him as “an impressive new filmmaker with a flair for implicit mayhem.” In the 12 features since then, Ozon has expressed his mayhem in various genres (musicals, fairy tales, magical realism, period romances, etc.), with different cinematic influences (Chabrol, Fassbinder, Renoir, Pasolini, etc.) and in a range of production scales. But central to all his films is a deep sense of the essentially conflicted nature of emotional relations, be it the comic sadomasochism of Water […]
by Peter Bowen on Sep 8, 2010
