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The Ring Finger
When she is slightly hurt in the factory where she works, Iris quits her job and finds a new one as an assistant in a laboratory of a very peculiar kind. Without fully grasping what is at play around her, she gradually engages in a disturbing love affair with her enigmatic employer.
Release : | 2005 |
Rating : | 6.1 |
Studio : | Canal+, CNC, Eurimages, |
Crew : | Production Design, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Olga Kurylenko Marc Barbé Stipe Erceg Édith Scob Hanns Zischler |
Genre : | Drama |
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I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
.........................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA and ORLANDO, FL Haunting musical score, disturbingly unsettling erotic scenes, perturbing voyeuristic encounters, Olga Kurylenko as eye candy, preserve-and-cherish- those-best-moments-of-your-life metaphors, artistic and interesting visuals...Put all these diverse elements into a cinematic blender and what do you get? A Film-Making 101 textbook example of the total being LESS than the sum of its parts! I've been asking myself the "What is this?" question incessantly for hours since spending 90 minutes as a "voyeur" of this experiment. As yet, there doesn't seem to be an answer.The director, Diane Bertrand, seems to be assiduously and blatantly giving us the title (sans "Ring") for the duration. The film revolves around a mysterious "clinic" where people go to have important life-relics "preserved"...In theory, at least. In practice, these supposedly priceless articles are soon forgotten about. It's difficult to empathize with any of the characters in the film because they're all so creepy, to one extent or another. Even Kurylenko's character is more off-putting than not.The supposedly "erotic" scenes are reminiscent of watching someone getting violated by their orthodontist during a root canal procedure. A rather self- indulgent piece of film-making, it's not hard to imagine dozens of Director Bertrand's friends gathered at her home for a private screening shouting "C'est Magnifique!" and "Incroyable!" afterward! As if this weren't enough, many segments are painfully languidly paced. "Finger" might have fared a little better after a second viewing, but I'm not motivated in the least to see it again.3.5*....ENJOY/DISFUTELA???...(If You Can Manage!) Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome!....
The sexy Ukrainian Bond-babe (from Quantum of Solace) Olga Kurylenko's first film was L'Annulaire (2005) . Iris (Kurylenko) have an accident and cut off her ring finger. Then she moves to a port town (filmed in Hamburg), and lodging in a hotel by the seafront. She gets a job as an assistant and receptionist for a man who preserve peoples specials items into specimen. The guy and the place is weird, and he comes up with some requirements to her, that makes the job and employer even weirder. It's originally a Japanese novel by Yoko Ogawa, and there is some strange Japanese atmosphere over this story. The movie is packed with the nude Iris, and I guess that alone will please a lot of male viewers. I think the story was going a bit empty after a while, but I'm a male viewer - so I stayed tune with the beautiful Iris until the final.
Saw this at TIFF 2005, my buddy and I went into this movie with no expectations and it ended up being a favorite (top 3 for me) of the film-fest. Unlike most at the fest, the pacing was perfect and each scene was necessary, it's a rare movie today that has such tight editing. The mystery and eros has a slow-burning build....This was the only film I attended at the fest that left the audience hushed during the credits as well. I wouldn't call it 'eerie', maybe 'otherworldly'? Reminded me a little of polanski's ninth gate somewhat (and that's a good thing), but I doubt that anyone else would make that comparison :) I've been thinking about this movie for five months, figured it would be a shoe-in on the art-house circuit, but haven't heard much yet, this movie deserves to be seen!
I saw this film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.L'Annulaire is the second feature film from director Diane Bertrand, who also wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of Yoko Ogawa's novel.The film follows Iris (Olga Kurylenko), who moves to a port town after cutting off the tip of her ring finger in an industrial accident. She quickly finds lodging in a hotel down by the harbour, but is forced to share a room with a sailor who works at night and sleeps while she is out in the day. While searching for work, by chance she comes across an old girls' school that now houses a man (Marc Barbe) who preserves and stores personal artifacts that people bring to him.Taking a job as the man's office assistant, she soon becomes involved in a sort of relationship with him, while at the same time being intrigued by the sailor (Stipe Erceg), whom she only knows through the things left in their shared room.The movie, filmed in Hamburg and just outside Paris, is beautifully shot. Bertrand favours many tight shots of the characters, giving a more intimate feel to many of the moments in the film. Noah Cowan, the co-director of the festival, described the film as combining the contemplative feel of Asian cinema with the sexual energy of European cinema. Thus, the film is very spare in its dialogue, leaving only the words that are spoken and the looks between characters as the framework on which to interpret the story.The preservation of personal artifacts in the film causes one to wonder about the nature of memories, loss, and the desire or need to move on, extending even to Iris' own life. This helps to draw the viewer into what is a very quiet and meditative film.I found the actress playing Iris was quite good, especially given that it was her first film and that she had to communicate so much non-verbally. A few of the scenes between her and the preservationist were charged with a lot of sensual energy, even in something as simple as him putting a pair of shoes on her feet.Notes from the Q&A with director Diane Bertrand: - L'Annulaire is very open-ended, and Bertrand herself admitted the film doesn't give any answers; the audience can imagine what it wants.She tried to be faithful to the novel, but it is very short. Bertrand added the sub-plot with the sailor.When asked why she adapted this novel, Bertrand said when she first read the book, she couldn't stop, and had all these images in her head, which was unusual since the atmosphere in the book is not European. But even upon re-reading the novel she still had the same feelings. She felt aspirations to explore the desire, love, and mysteries of the story.Olga Kurylenko is from the Ukraine, and this was her first film, thus making it difficult to obtain financing. Thus, there was lots of time for her to work on her character; Bertrand asked her to watch lots of films and read a lot of books. Kurylenko felt a bond to the character.The director of photography is also a photographer, which accounts for the look of the film.Bertrand wanted to film something slow like a painting, to make the audience feel as though they are watching moving images.Minor spoilers below:Bertrand had less direction for Marc Barbe, but she did ask him to not play his scenes with Kurylenko like he wanted to seduce her, even though the character seems to know exactly what she needs. Iris is supposed to feel that he sees inside her as soon as they meet. Barbe agreed that the character does not need to explain himself.In the novel, the shoes which play an important role in the story are black, not red, however Bertrand has a bit of an obsession with the colour red.Bertrand feels the story really starts with the scene where the preservationist puts the shoes on Iris' feet. It is Ogawa's theme that Iris has a feeling of being possessed by the shoes. But when Barbe's character tells Iris that she can't take the shoes off, she gives him a quick look that says "ok, so you want to play this game" and decides to do it, preferring to live something rather than nothing.