Word: minimalist
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...daring at all. Cinema Paradiso, Like Water for Chocolate, The Postman and their ilk gave viewers the warm fuzzies. They owed more to traditional Hollywood romantic dramas than to the trailblazing experiments of Bergman, Godard and Antonioni. As for the foreign films that critics championed, these tended to be minimalist to the point of inertia: static-camera portraits of glum people doing not very much...
...Maribel Verdú), fighting for possession of a sad, dreamy child. It's got sumptuous special effects and, finally, a mournful wisdom about love, honor and death. Also a standout was Climates, from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. This minor-key étude of love, sex and selfishness used minimalist strategies to reveal the shifting emotional allegiances of a college professor, played with gruff appeal by the director. Shortbus, a U.S. romantic comedy set in a New York City sex salon, might have been the outrage of the festival, since it contained several no-fooling hard-core sex scenes...
...films in the horror and science fiction genres are the movie rhinestones that alchemize into box office gold, thanks to a loyal contingent of dateless 14-year-old boys on a Friday night. At Cannes they are usually orphan children; here, the preferred genre is the minimalist melodrama...
...come inside, and after a few terse pleasantries he assaults her. She puts up a fight on the couch and, whack, as they fall to the floor; yet there is the hint that this may be the renewal of an cat-and-mouse old game between them. A minimalist movie doesn't offer many explanations; the viewer has to infer what's going on in the characters' heads, hearts and loins...
...Even those filmgoers who are averse to the minimalist aesthetic can find reasons to praise Climates. Here are four. One is that under its cloak of aesthetic severity, Climates has a beating heart, aware of the charm, selfishness and contradictions in any person. Another is that, though Ceylan the director loves taking long closeups of Ceylan the actor, he's worth it; this is a face, craggily attractive, that rewards extended attention. A third is that the movie occasionally reveals a wry, wise sense of humor. On his second encounter with Serap, she is the one eager to have...