A surreal drama about a woman trapped in an enmeshed family and her slow process of personal liberation, Phantom Love incorporates fairy-tale elements into brutal black-and-white photography to create a powerful document about one woman’s descent into self. Lulu (the captivating Marina Shoif) spends most of her life working in a casino in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. Her much younger lover, with whom she feels no emotional connection, and her sister Nitzan (Juliette Marquis), who is on meds and in the middle of a breakdown, share the rest of her time. Lulu’s visiting mother offers unwanted help, but she only complicates things. Phantom Love is full of Nina Menkes’s trademark surreal atmospheres. Intricate faces, shadows, and exotic animals come together, accompanied by the carefully constructed, subtle soundtrack. Menkes explores Lulu’s journey from the inside out, through violence and relationships, resulting in a mysterious family chronicle.
Menkes’s films have shown widely in major international film festivals including Sundance, Rotterdam, Locarno, London, Viennale, San Francisco, Berlin, Cairo, Toronto,as well as at La Cinematheque Francaise, The British Film Institute, the ICA in London, the Beijing Film Academy in China, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles. Menkes’ many honors include a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Annenberg Foundation Independent Media Grant, an American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award, three Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowships and two Senior Fulbright Research Awards—one to the Middle East/North Africa, and one to India. In addition, her work has been listed on many periodicals “Top Ten Films of the Year” lists, including Film Comment and, repeatedly, The Los Angeles Times. Her feature length, experimental documentary… read more
Uma viagem onirica pela rotina diária de uma mulher, na fase em mais tem de ajudar a sua louca irmã esquizófrénica, cuja ajuda da mãe de ambas é mais um pesadelo que uma vantagem. É esta a sina de Lulu, cujo dia-a-dia rotineiro incluem os momentos do seu trabalho no casino, as visitas de hotel ao amante e o tedio da sua solidão. Uma realidade tão pesarosa que a realizadora transforma num magnifico pesadelo surreal.
Also: The origins of the Korean New Wave. And the Skandies countdown is complete.
Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine screens tonight as part of the film series running in conjunction with Cinema Across Media: The 1920s, the First
Phantom Love is a dream of reality, from which we are woken up, wonderingly, by a telephone call at the end of the film.
It is one of the greatest examples of film being deservedly called work… read review
