In Maksym Nakonechnyi's Butterfly Vision Lilya, an aerial reconnaissance specialist with the Ukrainian army, is returned home after being captured by the Russians in the Donbas region. But not is all well on the home front with Tokha, her husband and also in the army, trying to come to terms with his own life, while Lilya decides whether to go ahead with her pregnancy. The country's conflict with Russia serves as metaphor for what the family finds on the ground. There are some good performances and also a glimpse into military drone technology....Anna Eriksson's W, from Finland, is a tour de force from the director, who wrote, edited, designed sets and costumes and scored the music to this post-apocalyptic psychological nightmare world. Ericsson is something of an avant pop star in Finland so this and an earlier film M continue to explore "concepts of future, time, immortality and ritual" (channeling) her own "fears, desire and subconscious." In the film, we're taken to a kind of Ice Station Zebra where the prisoners apparently had been seminal figures in the Before Times, but now are chained, tortured or left to die. In this End of the World world, seemingly deranged nurses are not there for the afflicted and resort to punishing one another. Victims cry out, "There is no time without motion" or “I am a human, I am a system." These are cries of pain - psychological and physical - from a future with no remorse......Asian crime movies are a cult genre all their own and hence Hideo Gosha's 1974 Violent Streets from Japan. But, quite frankly, all the back and forth gangland attacks and murders - full of blood and gore of course - simply got monotonous after awhile (how many times did I look at my watch?)…..In porn director Bruce LaBruce's The Affairs of Lidia, a North American premiere, LaBruce is once again up to his playful satirical takes on homo and heterosexual sex, with charming befuddled characters who are of the most moment of contemporary moments: fashionistas, designers and models. Deadpan conversations about relationship mores are hilarious. Says Michanegelo, "What does ‘gay’ even mean now? We're not living in the 20th century." Prosaic encounters lead to sex - don’t you know? - with the “soft” porn being as much in images as the lightheartedness of those involved. The costumes are gorgeous, the ironies over the top and the score is so appropriately terrific by artist - yes - Vomit Heat. (Well worth getting the album, Second Skin.)
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