Afterglow (1997)
When Lucky Mann (Nick Nolte) discovered his fifteen year old daughter was the result of an affair between his actress wife, Phyllis (Julie Christie), and one of co-stars, he responded violently and their confused daughter ran away.
Lucky and Phyllis moved to Montreal where they suspected their daughter was living, but agreed to forgo intimacy, but after nine years later, the lack of intimacy is taking a toll.
Lucky is seduced by Marianne (Lara Flynn Boyle) and, echoing the toxicity which ruined his marriage, she gets pregnant with his baby.
Julie Christie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, but I can’t understand why. This meandering, mess of a movie has no pulse. It’s a lifeless morality play about the dangers of cheating on your spouse.
Through the Olive Trees (1994)
In the first film of Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy, Where is the Friend’s Home (1987), a boy tries to return the notebook of one of his schoolmates.
In the second film, And Life Goes On (1992), two men search for the stars of the first film following an earthquake in the area it was filmed.
This, the third film, is a fictionalized account of the filming of And Life Goes On. When one of the local actors falls in love with one of the female actresses, it complicates the filming of a key scene.
Many critics treat Kiarostami as a modern-day Rosetta Stone, mining his work for what it says about Iranian society and culture, but they fail to ask what it tells us about the larger human condition. To combat these labels, his recent films, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), are set in non-Iranian locales with Japanese, English, French, and Italian dialogue.
Kiarostami’s films are very slow and methodical, almost to the point of inertia. He doesn’t like action, or movement, but enjoys lengthy, philosophical conversations. Like a late night marathon discussion, the camera stays while the players weave in and out. His films are provocative, but not entertaining. I love his willingness to double down on the fictional nature of his films and make their artificiality a subject, but many viewers will find them inaccessible and pretentious.