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Under the Sand

I saw an excellent film last night - Francois Ozon's Under the Sand (2000).

 

The film opens with Marie and her husband of some 25 years taking a trip to their beachside home.  In the morning they travel to the beach together, and making mention of taking a swim, Marie's husband leaves her lying in the sun reading her book. 

 

Sometime later Marie turns her attention back to the sea, only to find that her husband is gone, feared drowned, but the subsequent search does not reveal a body.  

 

Marie soon returns to her everyday life, striving to convince herself that nothing has happened, and indeed imagining that her husband is still by her side.

 

And what a fine study of grief this film is - fully measured and powerfully delivered by Charlotte Rampling as Marie.  In Under the Sand Ozon really delivers the film that Kieslowski's Three Colours Blue could only dream of being - anyone who has enjoyed any of Ozon's other films should more than enjoy this film.

 

The Sacrifice

What would you do if world events unfolded such that you knew that certain death was not only soon to befall you but also your country, all those you loved, and most heart breakingly, your one and only young son?  In your darkest hour, would you seek to enter into a desperate deal with God?  And say he came through, would you be able to keep up your end of the bargain?

 

These are the dark questions that Andrei Tarkovsky's achingly beautiful film, The Sacrifice (1986), confronts as protagonist, Alexander, and his family lie in wait for an almost certain nuclear holocaust.

The Sacrifice is yet another otherworldly study in slowness from the great Russian filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, and is a film not to be missed.

 

 

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