Bertrand Bonello's young-terrorist-band thriller NOCTURAMA

Already panned on moral and aesthetic grounds by the NYT's AO Scott. I liked it very much.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4816-behind-closed-doors-a-conversation-with-bertrand-bonello

J. Hoberman:

“Nocturama, the French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello’s daring and controversial follow-up to his 2014 Yves Saint Laurent biopic, is even more relentlessly stylish than its predecessor—an abstract thriller predicated on its young characters’ fantasies of taking revenge on the system and, less consciously perhaps, of liberating its largesse. The terrorists are ciphers but the movie is only superficially shallow. At once timely and timeless, it sets the aftermath of two centuries of French history to a hypnotic, trancelike beat.”

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/08/09/the-terrorists-go-shopping-nocturama/

The Saint Laurent pic isn't particularly good – it reminded me of Star 80 in its use of fractured narrative to give a jolt to hokey material – but it sure was sexy.

I liked it; this is one level up.

(my fave by him is still probably the bordello movie)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1660379/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

I didnt dig this.

"Oooh Im so full of ennui, lets blow up a bank!"

Its up on Netflix now btw

idk I liked it

but MB that's a plausible mindset of such characters

also some are sketched as politically driven tho ideological bullet points are few (it's not what Bonello wanted to focus on)

I know social realism wasn't what he was going for but isn't it cowardly to strip their actions of all ideology? Especially in the second half, where the kids are portrayed as being in thrall to late capitalism/commodity fetishism. I mean there's truth in that but its a very surface level interpretation.

tremendous movie is this, nothing like I was expecting it to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSkEkN01vKc

I blame David Lynch for this.

All kidding aside, this film was extremely Lynchian, down to the important of the Big O, but only in the best possible way.

the beast >>>>>>>

It played here one week and I missed it :(

nocturama and house of tolerance are on criterion channel. i watched the latter tonight. you should watch it asap, whoever you are

all over letterboxd you will find ppl calling this guy's films "lynchian" but they don't remind me of lynch at all? like the beast obv has some elements pulled from the return but the soul is so different

The Saint Laurent pic isn't particularly good – it reminded me of Star 80 in its use of fractured narrative to give a jolt to hokey material – but it sure was sexy.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 11, 2017

I was wrong.

probably my favorite working director. nocturama and house of tolerance are esp incredible but he hasn't made a bad film imho

his intellectual curiosity reminds me of assayas, but even more perverted

The end sequence in a surreal red bar with a Roy Orbison song on the soundtrack/jukebox def set off my Lynchometer

The Beast in the Jungle is such an interior story that a ‘faithful’ adaptation is impossible to imagine, but I felt the Jamesian element got lost as the film progressed, to the detriment of its narrative momentum/oomph.

xpost mine, too.

s/b xxpost

This reminded me of Chris Marker - apocalyptic Paris, time travel, the Vertigo- style obsessive memories of love. I think Bonello has said there was an entire strand in 30s Berlin they had to cut - would have preferred that over the LA sequence, which didn’t quite work for me.

I loved La Bete, got no criticisms at all.

other than it was way too consistently horny!

Borowczyk La Bête or Bonello La Bête?

Bonello. Wasn't trying to be fancy with the French title, it was a French dvd rip of it I watched.