Heli
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No Clean Getaways: Amat Escalante on Heli
It starts with a slow tilt over dead bodies traveling in space, slowly revealed to be tucked into the back of a white pick-up truck. One of them will soon be hung from a bridge, the early morning light silhouetting the dangling body: its formal sleekness notwithstanding, Heli isn’t for the faint of heart. Soon we’re introduced to a small, modest family in a remote Mexican village: a father and his two children, one of whom has a child of his own from a young wife. Surrounded by desert and not too far from the auto plant which employs many […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 12, 2014 -
Lesbian Lovemaking, Graphic Novels and a Changing China: Parsing the Cannes Awards
Sex sells, but it’s not the kind of thing that wins highbrow prizes—right? The fact that Abdellatif Kechiche’s explicit and entrancing Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adèle, chapitre 1 et 2) won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is a watershed moment, not least of which because its frank depiction of lesbian lovemaking wasn’t an obstacle towards being taken seriously. People may have tweeted their puerile snickering about the randy onscreen romps, but any sober viewer would acknowledge that those relatively brief moments (especially in a 179-minute film) were hardly exploitative — in fact, they […]
by Stephen Garrett on May 27, 2013
