35 Shots of Rum
Director: Claire Denis
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 2.0
Train-operator Dad lives with his daughter, and his daughter kinda/sorta has a thing going with a younger man, and Dad is wary of their relationship. Few filmmakers can take the most barren and mundane of plots and strip them even further down to feature-length form; though I understand she's 'respecting the audience' by not spelling everything out, what remains once the film's intentions are made clear is at the Hallmark Card level of complexity ("move on with your life"). What I do like about Denis' 'style' is how 'uncinematic' she makes everyday living: you can feel the weight of everyone's anxiety. For the record: thirty-five shots of anything alcohol-related would kill me (hell, it only took eighteen whiskeys to eliminate Dylan Thomas).
