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Thread: CANNES 2024 - remote notes

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  1. #34
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
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    SF Bay Area
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    ARIELA MASTROIANNI IN GAZER

    GAZER (Ryan J. Sloan)

    Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalizateurs). Critics seem enthusiastic about this intense little US debut, a "stylish noir" (Angie Han, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER) that makes one think of early Christopher Nolan, "and of course FIGHT CLUB" (Peter Bradshaw video review). It stars Sloan's co-writer, Ariella Mastroianni. It has a grim industrial New Jersey setting, and a brittle heroine. It is a "brilliantly paranoid debut" (Christian Zilko, INDIEWIRE),a "grimy, paranoid thriller shot on 16mm on the streets of Jersey City" (Bradshaw). Frankie (Mastroianni) is an impoverished young single mother who has neurological problems and suffers from dyschronometria. She lacks a normal sense of time and can "zone out." She is also something of a voyeur. To make $3,000 she offers to get a car for a woman called Page so she can escape from an abusive brother, but it's risky, complicated, and there is a danger she will zone out while carrying out this maneuver. This is like BABY DRIVER if it were "a tragic, music-free exploration of mental decay," says Zilko, who calls GAZER "the kind of debut that should restore your lost faith in independent cinema," even if it "it remains something to be admired from a distance rather than felt viscerally" (Han). Jacob Stolworthy in THE INDEPENDENT (UK) calls GAZER "psychological drama that's a cult-hit-in-waiting." Sloan reportedly made this film shooting on nights and weekends over two years while working at his regular day job as an electrician in New Jersey (work he has done since the age of 13) and Mastroianni worked in programming at Angelika Film Center in New York. One thinks of PRIMER: this kind of offbeat DIY film can be very memorable and original - even as, in this case, it plays with many noir conventions. Glazer talks about the "voyeur" theme HERE. Interviewed at Cannes, he cited REAR WINDOW, THE THIRD MAN, and Lee Chang-dong's BURNING as influences, also citing BLUW-UP and BLOW-OUT. He consciously sought to make a film like Carol Reed's classic, that can be watched more than once, Stolworthy reports.
    (Other Directors' Fortnight films described on this thread: MONGREL and CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER'S POINT.)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 05-24-2024 at 10:47 AM.

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