Our Journey through Foreign Films

Nick and I have been trying to work our way down the top foreign films in Paste Magazine and have been pleasantly surprised. It makes it difficult living in Switzerland, however, because some titles are not offered on i-tunes. What I like most about foreign films or independent films for that matter, is that they take more risks and are more creative in their camera angles, cinematography, and content. This proved to be true in the movie Cache. It is a french film directed by Michael Haneke and written by Michael Haneke . In Cache, it was a psychological thriller about a family that was being stalked. In the beginning, you are watching a surveillance camera, almost as if you were watching this house from the street, and the movie rewinds. I thought that was creative and interesting choice to begin a movie. Then you realize that it is the family looking at their camera surveillance tapes trying to catch the stalker. The end of the movie is very open ended and you are left wondering who was doing it.

Last night we watched a Mexican film entitled Amores Perros which means Love's a Bitch. It was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga It starts out at a dog fight (which is particularly hard to watch if you are a dog lover) and there are several scenes in the movie about this. The movie as a whole has to do with the old cliche "you don't know what you have until it's gone" or better yet until you lose it. Each character in the movie is forced to deal with loss. Loss of self respect, loss of love, loss of their dog, lose of their leg and modeling career, loss of a marriage. It also follows that philosophy that there are only nine degrees of separation and really looks at how interconnected the world really is. The movie centers around a car accident and how this accident affects three lives. I found this movie to be particularly gruesome in some scenes especially when the dogs are killed, but it was a twisted and dark way to look at it.

Well, can't wait to watch the next one!