The MUBI Weekly Digest | 15th February 2020
David Farnor | On 15, Feb 2020
Hot on the heels of a killer Bong Joon-ho double-bill, MUBI is serving up a second of two Wong Kar-wai gems this week with 2046 joining In the Mood for Love. Clouzot and Picasso and Godard are also on the line-up, but top of the bill this weekend is The Staggering Girl, the new short film from Luca Guadagnino starring Julianne Moore.
Looking for something on the big screen? Use MUBI Go (which offers a free cinema ticket every week to its subscribers) to see Takashi Miike’s First Love at participating cinemas.
What’s new, coming soon and leaving soon on the subscription service? This is your weekly MUBI Digest:
This week on MUBI
The Staggering Girl – 15th February
A collaboration between Luca Guadagnino and Pierpaolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, Julianne Moore stars in this short film that follows Francesca, who, triggered by a stranger’s secret confession, returns to her childhood home in Italy to convince her ailing mother to follow her to New York. As daughter confronts mother, ghosts of Francesca’s youth return in a whirlwind of pain, memory and fulfilment.
Wong Kar-Wai: 2046 – 16th February
He was a writer. He thought he wrote about the future but it really was the past. In his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same intention… to recapture their lost memories. It was said that in 2046, nothing ever changed.
Godard: Oh Woe Is Me – 17th February
At a Swiss lakeside resort, a book publisher investigates a mysterious tale, the story of a god-like being entering the body of a man, Simon, to experience physical love with his wife, Rachel. Did this actually happen or is Rachel just covering up her infidelity to her husband?
Our Town – 18th February
With one rickshaw and virtually no baggage, a man returns home from the Philippines. The Meiji era was coming to an end and things at home had changed drastically. Meeting his daughter, who is now four, for the first time, he desperately tries to recover the lost time with his family.
Le Mystère Picasso – 21st February
Clouzot and Picasso joined forces to make a new kind of art film, one that would capture the mystery of the creativity process. Using special inks that bled through a semi-transparent surface, the artist created a series of paintings that unfold chronologically, dancing into being before our eyes.
Other new releases on MUBI
Bong Joon-ho: 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.
Bong Joon-ho: Mother
Bong Joon-ho’s fourth feature film is a gripping study of the limits of maternal devotion. The film follows a widow (Kim Hye-ja) raising her mentally challenged son (Won Bin) in a small South Korean town, who finds her world plunged into nightmare, when a young girl is found murdered and her son the prime suspect. Betrayed by the legal system, the mother takes the law into her own hands to clear his name.
Bergman: Winter Light
Small-town pastor Tomas performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation, including his stubbornly devoted lover, Märta. When he is asked to assuage a troubled parishioner’s fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own doubt.
The Plagiarists
When a young white couple’s car breaks down, they’re helped by an older Black man who inspires them with creative wisdom. When they discover months later that the words he spoke might not be his own, they’re horrified, fixating on his “crime” while forced to confront the originality of their lives.
Awards: On Body and Soul
When a man and woman who meet at work begin to know each other, they discover that they have the same dreams at night, and they decide to make them come true. Subtly moving and brutally raw.
Awards: Anna Karenina
In Imperial Russia, Anna, the wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets the charming cavalry officer Vronsky to whom she is immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation. Kiera Knightley stars in Joe Wright’s arch, lavish adaptation of the Tolstoy classic.
Awards: Missing
After civil war breaks out and martial law is imposed by the military government of a South American country, American journalist Charles Horman is taken away by soldiers. His desperate wife and father are left to attempt to find out what has happened to him, with no help from embassy officials.
Awards: Pillow Talk
Who can resist the delightful silver screen chemistry of Rock Hudson and Doris Day? A charming romance is created around the anonymity of a phone conversation in this first collaboration of the duo, a perfectly timed comedy-of-errors and winner of an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Awards: Ida
Pawel Pawlikowski’s impressively directed and deeply moving drama about a young novice in a 1960s Polish commune is anchored by a pair of terrific performances
Awards: Son of Saul
A harrowing masterpiece that brings to life the vivid horror of the Holocaust.
Wong Kar-Wai: In The Mood For Love
In the sleepy, proper Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite — until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them…
A Family Submerged
Marcela’s world becomes strange after her sister dies. While she grieves, Marcela also purges her sister’s flat. When a friend of her daughter’s offers to help, she finds unexpected comfort, and their relationship deepens. During these confusing days, Marcela’s past and present become intertwined.
Godard: First Name Carmen
Carmen X, the female member of a terrorist gang, asks her uncle Jean if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends. In reality, her clan is planning on robbing a bank. During the burglary, Carmen falls in love with a security guard and will attempt to escape with him…
Godard: Détective
Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, lean on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up a considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place there years before.
Rear Window
James Stewart plays a professional photographer confined to his Greenwich Village apartment after breaking his leg. He looks in on the intimate dramas at play in his neighbours’ apartments and, eventually, he becomes convinced that a salesman murdered his nagging wife. Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal thriller is a masterclass in suspense, claustrophobia and perspective.
Number 37
With Hitchcock’s Rear Window on MUBI, don’t miss the chance to catch this gritty South African remake. Randall is a low level criminal recently crippled in an illicit deal gone wrong. Randall, wheelchair-bound in his apartment in Cape Town, is heavily indebted to a loan shark. The gift of a pair of binoculars gives him an opportunity to get the money he so desperately needs, but at great risk.
Rotterdam: The Beast in the Jungle
Weatherend House, 1903: John and May circle each other. She says they met, some 11 years ago. His voice-over describes his sense of being predestined for something, a premonition about ‘the beast in the jungle’ striking. What is it though? Love? Death?
Rotterdam: Mute Fire
In 1906, four men were executed for attempting to assassinate Colombia’s president. Years later, director Federico Atehortúa Arteaga discovers the strange and improbable relationship between the failed assassination, his mother, and the origins of cinema in Colombia: a long history of violence.
MyFFF: To the Ends of the World
Indochina, 1945. Young French soldier Robert Tassen is the only survivor of a massacre in which his brother has perished. Blinded by revenge, Robert rejoins the forces in search of the assassins. But meeting the young Indochinese Maï will change his beliefs and disrupt his mission.
Ether
A story of a military medical doctor experimenting with science at the beginning of the 20th century in order to get power over other people
A monthly subscription to MUBI costs £9.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial. A monthly subscription including MUBI GO costs £14.99 a month.
Last chance to stream: Titles leaving MUBI soon
To the Wonder
Available until end of: 15th February
Clockers
Available until end of: 16th February
Death Becomes Her
Available until end of: 16th February
Made in USA
Available until end of: 16th February
The Devil’s Eye
Available until end of: 16th February
Maggie
Available until end of: 20th February
The Spoilers
Available until end of: 21st February
Safe
Available until end of: 22nd February
Baden Baden
Available until end of: 23rd February
