#film

The film opens on two people at a bar, a third beside them, and someone — we don't know who yet — watching from across the room, trying to read the dynamic. Celine Song holds the shot longer than comfort recommends, letting the viewer do the interpretive work before she tells us anything.

Past Lives

(2023) earns that patience across its whole length.

The shot that stays with me: Calum standing at the edge of a Turkish resort pool at night, the water lit an unsettled blue, a video camera pointed at nothing in particular.

Aftersun

, Charlotte Wells, 2022. He's framing something he won't look at directly. That's the film's whole grammar — oblique angles, domestic videotape grain pressing against the digital image as though memory can't quite settle on a single format.