Lovers Of The Arctic Circle DVD

Basque director Julio Medem makes films like no one else's. Quirky, audacious, visually startling, they play teasing games with themes of doubling and fate. Symbolism runs riot, ironies abound, narratives stop dead to focus on seemingly absurd details--and in fact the whole shebang would risk being terminally pretentious were it not for Medem's subversive humour, inviting us into the joke and daring us to take him seriously.Lovers of the Arctic Circle is typical of his idiosyncratic brand of free-wheeling fantasy. In Madrid, two foster-siblings grow up to find themselves... gripped by irresistible, quasi-incestuous passion. Flashbacks reaching back to the Spanish Civil War show us how their destinies, those of the parents, and of their parents' lovers, have become entwined. The siblings are parted by circumstance, but seek each other out in Finland's Arctic north. Medem plays sleight-of-hand with doublings and wordplay, cutting deftly between the past, present and future, constantly challenging us to guess where he's heading next in the circling convolutions of his plot. --Philip Kemp [show more]

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