Miéville’s first solo feature is a sensitive, emotionally complex portrait of three women: a young opera singer contemplating having a child; her mother, who is torn between two lovers; and her grandmother, who lives a life of solitude. As in so many of Miéville’s films, communication is the theme; each woman must struggle, often against the men in their lives, to find her own voice.
Tag: 1980s
Leland is suicidal, so he hires a hitman called Avocado to kill him. Code word for the hit will be “tulips”. However, that’s when Leland meets his suicidal soulmate Rutanya and changes his mind. Now they must try to stop Avocado.
Lindsay Wagner stars as Joanne Van Buren, a social worker whose personal and professional life are on the brink of collapse. Her spirit is reawakened, however, when she takes the case of six-year-old Eric Townsend. Found by the police alone at the zoo, Eric shows all the signs of having been molested. Joanne’s compassion for Eric drives her to solve the mystery of Eric’s abuser.
Arriving in Taiwan in the 1950s, Kuei-mei makes a disadvantageous marriage to a widower with three unruly kids and a bad gambling habit. Beautifully portrayed by celebrated actress Yang, she weathers pregnancies, her husband’s infidelity, her daughter’s resentment, a stint as servant in Japan, divorce, and illness while struggling to keep the family restaurant business afloat.
Jean Stapleton stars as Eleanor Roosevelt in this made-for-TV biography, first telecast May 12, 1982. The film recounts Mrs. Roosevelt’s life after the 1945 death of her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the request of new president Truman, Eleanor serves as a United Nations delegate, spending much of her time tilting with dedicated anti-FDR politico John Foster Dulles. She goes on to spearhead the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proving to Dulles–and to Soviet delegate Freddie Jones–that she’s anything but soft on Communism.
A documentary profiling a Japanese taiko drumming group based in the remote Sado Island, Japan. The film blurs the line between real-life documentary footage of the troupe’s training and practice regimes, and staged performances of their varied musical acts, with sets designed by artist Tadanori Yokoo and an additional experimental electronic music score by Toshi Ichiyanagi.
In Ulrike Ottinger’s contemporary reinvention of the famous morality tale, fin de siècle dandy Dorian Gray is reimagined as a drag role, played without comment on the switch by Veruschka von Lehndorff in the male lead. Ottinger’s collision of Oscar Wilde and Fritz Lang features Delphine Seyrig as one “Dr. Mabuse,” the head of a sinister multinational newspaper agency that conspires to create, control, and destroy celebrity figure Dorian Gray. The film is an odyssey through eye-popping tableaux, including a trip to an unforgettable underworld.
Danny Glover stars as Apples Finnerty, a low budget film director whose life is crumbling. Finnerty can’t get work, he’s been evicted, and his wife is unfaithful. As he drives in to the hills, he gets a flat. A “helpful” stranger turns out to be an armed robber. Apples kills his assailant in self-defense and switches identities with him, escaping his own disastrous past. Unfortunately, his new identity is in hot water with the mob.