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A truly bizarre, often adventurous, and mostly but not entirely successful hybrid of Merchant Ivory-style costume drama, Cronenberg-style dementia, Black Mirror-style future shock, and Blumhouse-style horror. With maybe a bit of Lynch-ian whatever sprinkled all over. Léa Seydoux and particularly George MacKay do a phenomenal job of tying together this love-through-the-ages story, where their characters take on sometimes radically different dimensions from vignette to vignette; if there's a selling point for this movie it’s the opportunity to watch these two leads navigate these intricate parts. Director Bertrand Bonello seems aware of the tremendous advantage they afford him; he relies on these performances to bring cohesion to wildly different tones and approaches. Mostly it works, as he's able to keep the audience guessing but engaged. It's less successful in the third act, when we arrive at a scenario set in present day. This segment feels less distinctive, drags on a bit, and Bonello reveals an unfortunate bias when he positions the act of making love with an “ugly” person as a flavor of horror. Still, this doesn't diminish the spellbinding nature of this accomplishment.
Watched it on the Criterion Channel’s live “broadcast” at home.
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