Molly Morrow

One of the most beautiful and profoundly original works of art I’ve ever experienced in my life. Not just movies or film but any art form, including live theatre, literature, music, gritty HBO dramas, ventriloquism, various textiles, fondue, scrapbooking, etc. This movie is a living breathing painting that captures the gorgeous form of its subject in original thought but also suggests new forms and makes its audience into new subjects. Every shot feels like a great expressionist painter’s private composition. The world of this movie is a fully self-contained universe totally disinterested in what it should or shouldn’t be, and even less interested in following conventional paths toward over-engineered meaning - writer and director Celine Sciamma rejects all cliche, grants godlike respect to her audience, avoids turning characters into cartoons, slogans, campaigns, or manifestos. She does not stumble. She refuses even accidentally to convert a difficult and subtle love story into a parody or a lazy reduction of love’s complexity. She is a master and masters do not make those kinds of imaginative errors. Her screenplay is faithful only to itself and to its own brilliant instinct for surprise and beauty, which allows it the full revelatory power of literary fiction. The whole movie builds to one of the most spectacular ending shots in all of movie history. Got chills and had to leave the room to collect myself more than once. Can compete with certain Chekhov stories in terms of pure emotional and cerebral voltage. Reminded me of Kubrick, Inurritu, Fellini, Cuaron, Coppola, various painters, the time I sat in the MoMA surrounded by water lilies and cried, etc. Celine Sciamma is a master and for this film alone she deserves to be listed among the greats. Oh - and the lead roles in this film are played by *the two most drop-dead gorgeous women I have ever seen* - ever - either in life or in film or on a stage, on a game show of American Japanese or Italian viewership, or in dreams - some as they appeared to me, some described to me by lovesick/starstruck friends.