The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2011)

Working at an art house can be frustrating sometimes.  Seeing what little amount of people actually show up to watch these films is depressing.  Especially when the films that actually manage to get some people through the door are Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and the like.  And films like The Deep Blue Sea play to a theater with just one or two bodies.  Being only my second Terence Davies film I certainly don't understand why I've neglected this auteur for so long, especially considering that my first was Of Time and the City and I was completely blow away.  The Deep Blue Sea's opening sequence reminded me of Lars von Trier's Melancholia's overture.  An operatic sequence that blends past, present and future.  Beautifully shot with Barber's concerto working much in the same way as Wagner in the von Trier film. Actually the film felt like a weird mixture of Melancholia and David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method.  All films have this nostalgic, classic aura, a long with heavy doses of romanticism.  They are incredibly over-the-top melodrama, a 'problems of the rich' film; as are many of Fassbinder's work, of course the king of them all: Sirk, etc..  Somehow this three films nostalgic feelings seem much more honest than other such straight-forward tributes as The Artist and Hugo which actually seem too gimmicky to amount to anything beyond that.