The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, October 7-13
Esther Kahn (2000)
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin
Desplechin’s brand of French cinema is sprightly, acidic and fun. His movies in English are another matter entirely. Esther Kahn (like its later cousin Jimmy P) is a deeply upsetting study of an outsider unable to communicate with an environment that has enveloped her like a fog. Ahead of her time and saddled with ambition, Summer Phoenix’s Esther slowly develops her sense of self as she takes to performing on the London stage. Desplechin mimics Phoenix’s distance from the life around her by refusing nostalgia to the ugly past. Phoenix’s un-suppressible discomfort is matched by the dim lighting, drab interior design and meticulous human honesty driving the drama. Esther Kahn could have been made a hundred years ago and it would still hold some viewers under its weird spell. It discovers a truth about this complicated woman that is, if bracing and less than easy to fully grip, undeniably moving. Scout Tafoya (October 13, 4pm, 7:30pm at FIAF)