Boys don’t cry (1999)

Were you like me – a girl, girl?
Ya. Like a long time ago. Then I guess I was just more like a boy – girl. And I was just a jerk.

Directed by – Kimberly Peirce

Rarely do you come across films that are based on real life incidents and given such authentic treatment that its almost believable. There has been controversy on the portrayal of the characters and the ‘truth’ behind their real lives, but that I think is quite inevitable.

Brandon Teena was a trans man. ‘A he’ but anatomically ‘a she’. It accounts Teena’s experiences as a man after he decided to embrace his sexual identity as a boy. He then started dating a girl, Lisa Tisdel – but became a victim to jealousy and hate-crime of Tisdel’s friends who were ex-convicts living in Falls city, Nebraska.

I found it very disturbing. But it also updated my knowledge on transsexuals around the world. Hilary Swank was absolutely stunning in her portrayal of Brandon Teena, the boy who was unfortunately born a girl. Loved it. These are the films that make history and it did.

A royal affair (2012)

I think some people are so sealed inside their fate
that they hide deep within their mind.

Directed by – Nikolaj Arcel

Mark Twain said, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Well that I think will sum up this beautiful piece of work for us. A royal affair is based on a book Prinsesse af blodet by Bodil Steensen-Leth.

In the 18th century, a princess from England, Caroline married a mentally ill King, Christian VII of Denmark. It was only to realise that Denmark was not as liberal and open to ideas as she thought it would  be. Inevitably, the couple grows apart in an unhappy marriage destined for forever. Enters,  Johann Friedrich Struensee. A royal physician who saves the king from a small pox epidemic and becomes respected in the state. But in other revelations, we learn that he is a member of the Enlightenment group – who aim to reform the state with liberal and fair – proved ideas.

Soon his influence on the king becomes a disturbing factor for the statesmen ruling for years and the affair between queen Caroline and Johann becomes an ambush to end it for all.

Exciting right? Hell yea it is. You don’t wanna not watch it.

 

Sex and lucia (2001)

“You have to choose. Wild sex with a stranger, or wild sex with someone who’s crazy about you, and who you love? Go ahead. Be frank.”

Directed by – Julio Medem

Julio Medem likes to play with the minds of his audience and well, he is damn good at it. The film starts with Lucia getting a phone call leading her to believe that her lover, Lorenzo is killed in an accident. Soon, the story if interweaved with Elena, who a long time back had had casual sex with Lorenzo in the ocean.

Sex and Lucia is about Lorenzo, a writer whose depression we learn about in the discontinued narrative, it is about Lucia who is his passionate lover trying to understand the reasons of his misery and it is about Elena, whose life has been struck with tragedy. And all of this comes together magically in the film.

The  subtle confusions are a part of the plot and the effect. The characters on the other hand have actually been freed from the dubiety of the plot and are as clear and strong as the security of an artist’s brush while drawing his imagination.

Its way too beautiful a film.

The Dreamers (2003)

“Before you can change the world you must realize you are part of it.
You can’t stand outside, looking in”

Directed by – Bernardo Bertolucci

Based on Gilbert Adair’s novel “The Holy Innocents”, The Dreamers is a film about three friends in Paris, a pair of twins – Theo and Isabelle and an American exchange student – Matthew, who bonded over cinema, politics and love.

I loved the way they meet – while protesting for Henri Langlois’s dismissal from Cinémathèque Française. From the very beginning, you see these youngsters so passionate and gripped by the power of cinema. Eventually, the uninhibited relationship between the twins yet not completely incestuous becomes a utopian world for the trio as Matthew fits in as Isabelle’s lover.

It talks about Maoism and the youth movement in Paris during late 1960s through this amazingly furnished plot. It might seem surreal at places but that is the beauty of The Dreamers.

 

Talk to her (2002)

“You heard her. She loves it.”

Directed by – Pedro Almodóvar

Love – a powerful word that is. Talk to her is a very strong representation, if I might call, of the loss of love or rather – about love that is not lost, even if it is.

Weaving into the lives of four people – a male nurse who is obsessed and in love with a dancer and a journalist who meets an infamous female matador and eventually falls with her. Both the women, in their respective tragedies become comatose and that is what the story revolves around. Feelings can be subjective to the past and the film has also been treated like that, with flashbacks, discontinued narrative which makes it all the more interesting. A beautiful film, subtle yet loud. Loved it.

Kickass torrent link to download – Click here 

Edie and Thea – a very long engagement (2009)

Directed by – Susan Muska, Gréta Olafsdóttir

I have made a rule to note down how a documentary film starts because if its a good film, at the end of it I always forget how it started. I am glad I remember how Edie and Thea began for me.

It did not feel like a film about a gay couple trying to find recognition in the US. It was a story of love and a life lived with “joy” about Edie and Thea who got married after 40 years of courtship. A story worth knowing about – a very honest, sweet tale of passion, adoration and togetherness. Even you are not a sucker for romance like me, I think you would quite love it.

Here is an interview with the directors that I stumbled upon. Click.

Kickass torrent link to download – click here

Lovers of the arctic circle (1998)

I’ll love you always and if the petrol runs out, I’ll die.

Directed by –  Julio Medem

One of those typically beautiful storytelling. Its like reading your favourite book, a classic at that. The likes of Amelie or A very long engagement or Love me if you dare and an absolutely heart warming and heart wrenching film at the same time.

Otto and Ana meet and fall in love when they were kids but with Otto’s mother’s death, he leaves. The film is their search for each other and the denouement, the climax comes with a silent bang. Coincidences are a character in themselves in films like these but again they are not meant for the sake of ‘conveniences’. They are fairy tales and not all of them have a happy ending.

Watch it! The beauty of human emotions – their ways of expressing it.. Incredible.. The film itself is basically a palindrome, like the names of the protagonists – Ana and Otto. The story is the beginning and the end – but meets in the middle. In a metaphysical film as this, the characters provide a ground of reality.

Kickass torrent link to download – click here

Head-On (2004)

“If you want to end your life, end it. You don’t have to kill yourself to do that.”

Directed by –  Fatih Akin

“Gegen die wand” happens when a 40 year old Turkish German (who has become a druggie-alcoholic after his wife’s death) meets Sibel – a trapped young girl in a conservative family who yearns to get out of it. They meet in the hospital where both of them were admitted for committing suicide. She asks him to marry her so that she can get out of her family and after long he agrees. They decide to have separate sex lives – thus, like married roommates. But eventually they fall in love and what happens after that – is the reason you must watch the film.

Its stunning. Beautiful story – telling. One of those tragic love stories told in the most tragic way and you can’t stop loving it and neither can stop recommending it.Watch!

Kickass torrent link to download – click here

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Three colours – Red (1994)

Directed by – Krzysztof Kieslowski

The last film of the famous trilogy and also the most complex. That is explained from the theme itself i.e. red for fraternity. But then its not just the colour, its different shades that say different things. The film talks about the human nature of trying to connect ceaselessly. It doesn’t matter what we want, it doesn’t matter if we want to reach out or not. Every action of ours is affecting somebody or the other, somewhere we do not perhaps even know. And that Kieslowski has been brilliantly able to prove with peculiar co-incidences in Red.

The film is about Valentine, a part-time model and university student, a selfless person trying to see good in everything who meets Kern, a retired judge whose judgement on humanity is that they aren’t worth anything – a cynical sulker you might call. The narrative is a multi-layer reference to the meaning of fraternity – where people connect with each other in ways completely unimagined and where no one lives in isolation, shown from the perspective of two extreme opposites of human nature. I absolutely loved it.

PS – Its not the kind of film you watch and say how amazing it is. It is the kind of film that you watch, that takes time to sink into you. Its an unmatched experience. And I am glad it happened to me in my classroom at XIC. Thanks to Arun Sukkumar.

Kickass torrent link to download – click here

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The lovers on the bridge (1991)

Directed by – Leos Carax
Written by – Leos Carax

That film which introduced me to Leos Carax. One of the most uncanny, perplexing, pure and contentious romance I have ever seen. Its a simple but complicatedly interweaved story of a young, homeless couple who fall in love while living in Paris’s oldest bridge, Pont Neuf.  Michele is an artist with a rare eye disease and Alex is a circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives.While in the first half of the film, I was in the process of understanding this filmmaker’s perspective, with on and off feelings about it, the second half of the film completely caught me in its web. Alex falls madly in love with Michele and while she is trying to get over her failed relationship, Julian – she also finds a dependable companion, soon-to-be-lover in Alex. But he is scared that she will leave him if her eye is cured and thus, tries to keep her away from it but eventually ‘hope’ finds its way to the bridge and when the film culminates, you can’t help but wonder how purely magical cinema could be.

This feature starring  Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant, has sucked up the best of them – you’ll be amazed by its intensity. You don’t have to see fire to feel the heat. My favourite scene is the last one – the one before they fall from the jeep – the one with her joke and both of them laughing.