Julia Loipersberger
Author's posts
Oct 28
Sex Drive – Adelaide Film Festival – Palace Nova Cinemas
Let’s face it – love (and sex) pretty much makes the world go round. Sex Drive, a compilation of short films about all aspects of the most important topic, examines themes as diverse as the universe of a prostitute who wants to get out of the game and risks everything to start a normal life (portrayed in the …
Oct 28
Joy – Adelaide Film Festival – Palace Nova Cinema
In current times, Greece is – sadly – not known as a joyous, carefree country. The bleakness and despair of post-austerity measures is highlighted in Ilias Yannakakis’ 2012 film, Joy, which focusses on a desperate middle-aged woman who walks into a doctor’s clinic and kidnaps a baby. The moments of disturbing maternal affection showered on the …
Oct 14
Adelaide Film Festival – The Selfish Giant
As frequently happens with movies that are ‘based on’ books or other stories, I failed to see how Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant bore any real resemblance to the gorgeous Oscar Wilde fairytale of the same name. Perhaps that is because I was too busy sobbing into my tissues through the whole film. A bleak, …
Oct 14
Adelaide Film Festival – Will you still love me tomorrow?
In this rom-com with a twist, boy meets boy. Boy falls in love with boy. Boy tries to figure out how to tell his wife (who wants another baby) that he is in fact gay – and has been gay since long before they married. Add to this mix the adorable protagonist Weicheng’s (Richie Ren) …
Oct 14
Adelaide Film Festival – Sharknado
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s a live, angry shark in a tornado. Or make that hundreds of hungry sharks. Yes, that really is the premise of surprise Hollywood schlockfest Sharknado. Starring the indomitable Tara Reid (what has she done to her face), Ian Ziering (for those who remember, an …
Oct 13
Adelaide Film Festival 2013 – The Stranger by the Lake
This film, like the naïve protagonist Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), is languorous, seductive, very nice to look at but a little bit confusing. A French film which caused a significant stir at Cannes in 2013 (largely due to significant amount of non-simulated sex), The Stranger by the Lake focusses on the ‘cruising’ scene for gay men …
Oct 13
Adelaide Film Festival 2013 – Behind the Veil
There are few things more topical in 2013 than the treatment of women in Islamic countries around the world. A composition of short films focussing on issues concerning Muslim-women throughout the world, Behind the Veil focusses a lens on subjects which are often taboo or misunderstood. This compilation includes an exploration of the way modern Australian society projects its own …
Oct 13
Adelaide Film Festival – ‘Like father, like son’
Imagine living out a wildly improbable scenario which was extremely unlikely to occur, but if and when it did has the power to invoke enormous consequences and change to every facet of your life. This is what Ryota Nonomiya, successful businessman, uptight disciplinarian and ambitious father is faced with in this Japanese drama when he …
Sep 26
OZASIA – The Lonely Wife (Charulata) – Satyajit Ray
What is generally regarded as acclaimed Indian director Satyajit Ray’s most accomplished film, the 1964 masterpiece, Charulata (The Lonely Wife) screened during the OzAsia Festival to a sizeable crowd. Rich, beautiful and lonely Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee in the titular role) is sick of life in her gilded cage in turn-of-the-century 1900s Calcutta. Despite the adoration …
Sep 16
OzAsia- Film – Night of Silence (Lal Gece)
Nobody really likes the idea of a 50+ year old man marrying a girl barely into her teens as part of an arranged marriage, particularly against the background of recent – tragic – media attention relating to the terrible consequences of such an intergenerational relationship. Even worse is the concept of imagining the act of consummating such …
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