FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE
February - March 2008
The Facets Cinémathèque is located at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago. For more information on films playing in the Cinémathèque, please call 773-281-4114. To order advance tickets online, visit the TicketWeb website by clicking here.
U.S. Theatrical
Premiere
PHANTOM LOVE
"Controversial, intense and visually stunning"
-Sight and Sound
"Not since Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies has black-and-white looked so stunning and mesmerizing"
-Variety
"It's easy -- and best -- to yield to [director] Menkes' powerfully seductive vision, which invites viewers to make intuitive connections"
-Los Angeles Times
"Phantom Love continues, expands and enriches Menkes' themes and aesthetics...she masterfully posits her mise en scène at the crossroads between the ever-intimate hold dreams have over us and the power that cinema has to elicit parallel universes for an audience while being anchored in the mechanical reproduction of reality."
-Senses of Cinema
Critic's Choice!
-Chicago Reader
"Fiercely compelling"
-NewCity Chicago
A memorably surreal psychodrama, Nina Menkes' (
The Bloody Child,
Magdalena Viraga) Phantom Love is a striking evocation of female dreamscape in which violence and trauma are steadily percolating, just beneath the surface. The lead character is Lulu Marina Shoif: a very beautiful, but angry and isolated woman, who lives alone, and works in a casino in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Lulu's relationship with her much younger lover is charged but emotionally disconnected and Lulu's younger sister, Nitzan (Juliette Marquis,
This Girl's Life), is in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, caused in part by prescription medication. Lulu feels emotionally invaded by her mother, who wants to come to town and stay with her in order to try and help the younger sister -- but this feels like a further intense invasion, and Lulu refuses.
Phantom Love positions an alienated woman against a harsh, inhospitable landscape -- this time, within a family. Structured like Chinese boxes, with each scene opening onto another,
Phantom Love is a powerful erotic-fantasy that explores a woman's sexuality through her dreams.
Directed by Nina Menkes, U.S.A., 2007, 35mm, 87 mins.
Director site
MySpace site (with video clips)
Variety
Senses of Cinema
Chicago Reader
NewCity Chicago
Showtimes:
Fri., Feb. 29 at 7 & 9 pm
Sat.-Sun., Mar. 1-2 at 3, 5, 7 & 9 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Mar. 3-6 at 7 & 9 pm
Tickets: