Film Screenings / Programs / Series
VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE 2019
February 14 – February 21
Anthology continues our cherished tradition of celeb(/denig)rating Valentine’s Day by presenting a selection of radically anti-romantic films. The series is anchored by two films that are virtually identical in many ways, save for their wildly different tones: Maurice Pialat’s grueling, autobiographical study of a dysfunctional off-and-on relationship, WE WON’T GROW OLD TOGETHER, and Albert Brooks’s hilarious yet no less painful MODERN ROMANCE. This Jekyll and Hyde pairing is supplemented by Andrzej Zulawski’s POSSESSION, a batshit crazy depiction of an imploding marriage that’s perhaps the ultimate dysfunctional relationship film, and Elaine May’s masterpiece, THE HEARTBREAK KID, which in the spirit of Valentine’s Day Massacre is at once a hilariously funny and bitterly corrosive depiction of male/female relations. And this year we make room for a couple 21st century additions, with a pairing of two Paul Thomas Anderson films about strange, alarming, and functionally dysfunctional romantic couples: 2002’s PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE and the brand new PHANTOM THREAD.
Thanks to Brian Block (Bleeding Light Film Group), Chris Chouinard (Park Circus), Johan Ericsson (Swedish Film Institute), Jason Jackowski (Universal), Dave Jennings (Sony), Dieynaba N’Diaye (TF1 Studio), and Jacob Perlin (The Film Desk).
Maurice Pialat
WE WON’T GROW OLD TOGETHER / NOUS NE VIEILLIRONS PAS ENSEMBLE
1972, 110 min, 35mm. In French with English subtitles. With Jean Yanne & Marlene Joubert.
“Far from viewer-friendly, [this film] tells the story of the endless breakups and makeups of a highly unstable yet apparently indissoluble couple. It’s a sort of love story told in inverted terms, depicting the protracted end of a five-year affair, with its arbitrary disagreements, sudden mood shifts, moments of irrational anger, and displays of stinging contempt, presented with a genuine, unmeasured violence. ‘You’ve never succeeded at anything and you never will’, says Jean, a 40-year-old married filmmaker, to his younger, working-class lover Catherine. ‘And do you know why? Because you are vulgar, irremediably vulgar, and not only are you vulgar, you are ordinary.’ These are the film’s most celebrated lines…a sort of brutalist alternative to the famous line from LOVE STORY: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’” –Dave Kehr, FILM COMMENT
Thurs, Feb 14 at 6:45, Sat, Feb 16 at 3:30, and Thurs, Feb 21 at 9:00.
Albert Brooks
MODERN ROMANCE
1981, 93 min, 35mm-to-DCP. With Albert Brooks, Kathryn Harrold, Bruno Kirby, George Kennedy, and James L. Brooks.
MODERN ROMANCE may be Albert Brooks’s least-known film, but arguably it’s his greatest – the most uncompromising and consistent, and, as restrained as it is on the surface, ultimately the most personal and unforgiving in its self-criticism. Brooks is Robert Cole, a film editor who breaks up with his girlfriend only to spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to erase his mistake, and even more desperately trying to contain his jealousy, neediness, and paranoia. Still the great comic portrait of male neurosis, and of emotional and psychological dysfunction, MODERN ROMANCE lays bare its protagonist’s insecurities with an honesty few dramatic films have achieved. Only Brooks could make a deadpan comedy about a man who’s very nearly psychotic. Painfully funny, with the emphasis on ‘funny.’
Thurs, Feb 14 at 9:15 and Tues, Feb 19 at 6:45.
Elaine May
THE HEARTBREAK KID
1972, 106 min, 35mm. With Charles Grodin, Cybill Shepherd, Jeannie Berlin, and Eddie Albert.
“Were there film-historical justice in the world, THE HEARTBREAK KID would be remembered as something more than a finger-jabbed-a-little-too-sharply-in-the-ribs footnote to THE GRADUATE. An excruciatingly hilarious masterpiece of modern misanthropy, May’s second directorial outing stars Charles Grodin as a newlywed who, not five days into his honeymoon, mercilessly dumps his bride (played, with an Oscar-nominated mixture of hapless pathos and a double order of egg salad, by May’s daughter, Jeannie Berlin) in order to pursue Cybill Shepherd’s teenage Minnesota WASP princess. An anatomy of internalized rage, curdled misogyny, and bottomless self-deception, May’s second film – as indeed do each of the four films she directed – deserves better.” –Chuck Stephens, FILM COMMENT
Fri, Feb 15 at 6:45 and Tues, Feb 19 at 9:00.
Andrzej Zulawski
POSSESSION
1981, 127 min, 35mm. With Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, and Margit Carstensen. Written by Andrzej Zulawski & Frederic Tuten.
If you think the Pialat and Albert Brooks films depict romantic relationships in a less-than-flattering light, behold Zulawski’s POSSESSION, in which the psychic violence of the other two films in the series erupts into literal violence of the most outrageous and over-the-top variety. A nihilistic, no-holds-barred portrait of a disintegrating marriage, featuring highly stylized, career-best performances by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, POSSESSION starts as psychodrama, develops into queasy supernatural horror, and ends up exploding all known genres. A film of rampant and astonishingly sustained hysteria, its craziness equaled only by its fecund imagination and deep conviction, POSSESSION is the definition of a film that’s not for the faint of heart. It may just have the power to annihilate Valentine’s Day once and for all.
Fri, Feb 15 at 9:00.
Paul Thomas Anderson
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE
2002, 95 min, 35mm
As a quasi-romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE may have seemed at the time to represent a sidestep from the increasingly ambitious and weighty trajectory of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career, but in retrospect it remains one of his greatest and most unusual achievements. What distinguishes PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE above all is the extent to which the film’s own rhythms and textures mirror the fractured, anxious psyche of its profoundly strange and sometimes alarmingly dysfunctional protagonist. Sandler is Barry Egan – shy, recessive, yet prone to volcanic outbursts of anger – and the film charts the unlikely romance that develops when Emily Watson’s Leda appears in his life. Flirting with romantic comedy and the musical, but with a hard edge and unsettling vision that’s entirely unique, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE is, like its protagonist, equal parts sentimental and unhinged.
Sat, Feb 16 at 6:00, Sun, Feb 17 at 8:30, and Thurs, Feb 21 at 6:45.
Paul Thomas Anderson
PHANTOM THREAD
2017, 130 min, 35mm
Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent film distinguished itself, among other ways, by eliciting a dizzying range of responses, many of them virtually diametrically opposed. In portraying the relationship between a figure who embodies the myth of white male genius (Daniel Day Lewis’s monstrously perfectionist fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock) and his seemingly long-suffering, powerless love interest (Vicky Krieps’s Alma), is it perpetuating toxic gender relations or subtly deconstructing them? One thing is for sure: aside from its intoxicating set design and mise-en-scène and its typically stylized and finely wrought performances, PHANTOM THREAD is not the film it initially appears to be. Slowly but surely it clears an unexpected path for itself, only gradually revealing its modus operandi and forcing us to recalibrate our attitudes and expectations. Ultimately, it becomes a sly and subtly subversive exploration of gender and power dynamics, and a worthy addition to the Valentine’s Day Massacre lineup.
Sat, Feb 16 at 8:30 and Sun, Feb 17 at 5:30.
