James R | On 17, Jun 2017

Heard of BFI Player? Well, there’s also BFI Player+, a subscription service that offers an all-you-can-eat selection of hand-picked classics.

Every Friday, Mark Kermode highlights one of the collection’s titles with a video introduction. This week, it’s Amour Fou. Don’t be misled by the title. While ‘amour fou’, in the popular imagination, refers to steamy affairs and passionate flings, Jessica Hausner’s austere drama prefers to focus on the literal translation of the phrase: insane love. It is the true-life story of 19th century Prussian writer Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (Friedel), so disenchanted by life he sought a companion willing to join him in a suicide pact, and his attempts to persuade married hausfrau Henriette Vogel (Schnoeink) to be ‘the one’. (Read our full review.)

Kermode hails Hausner’s film as an “indefinable oddity”; a chilly, satirical, and handsomely-mounted tale of love and death.

What else is new? Here are the latest titles on BFI Player+ this week:

Stockholm My Love

Neneh Cherry, director Mark Cousins and cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s exquisite love song to the Swedish city, also available to watch in UK cinemas. (Read our full review.)

Hands of the Ripper

This Hammer Horror classic from 1971 sees Freudian psychiatrist (Eric Porter) cover up for his patient, the homicidal daughter (Angharad Rees) of Jack the Ripper.

Duffer

This study of obsession focuses on a teenage boy torn between the charms of a fleshly female prostitute and the sadism of an older man.

The Moon over the Alley

The Moon Over the Alley reunites Duffer writer/directors Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq, with this London musical about a doomed Notting Hill boarding house in the 1970s.

Fitzcarraldo

One of Werner Herzog’s most acclaimed and audacious films, Fitzcarraldo tells the incredible story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an opera-loving fortune hunter who dreams of bringing opera to the heart of the Peruvian jungle.

The Host

Bong Joon-ho’s barnstorming yet highly original monster movie follows an eccentric family’s attempts to rescue the daughter snatched by a huge amphibious creature.

 

A BFI Player+ subscription costs £4.99 a month with a 30-day free trial. For more information, visit http://player.bfi.org.uk.
 

Add to Watchlist