Here's what you should do this weekend: Go to the Coolidge and see "Day Night Day Night" without reading a single review. Don't even go to the Coolidge's website; they give the game away, too. All you need to know is that the movie's about a young woman (the remarkable Luisa Williams, above) at the end of her emotional rope and what she does about it.
It's also about New York City and about being in the midst of it while feeling completely apart. As a portrait of emotional extremity and the search for grace, it consciously aspires to Falconetti in Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" -- an absurdly ambitious target that director Julia Loktev comes close to realizing. (There's also a lot of Bresson whingwhanging around inside this movie.) Some feel "Day Night Day Night" is irresponsible in regards to certain real-world issues, but I beg to differ: Loktev and Williams use the real world merely as a backdrop to an elemental spiritual struggle.
Why am I being so coy? Because "DNDN" works best when you go in knowing nothing and let its initially enigmatic opening scenes crystallize into something very, very dark before the movie even thinks to seek the light. If you've read Wesley's review -- no, I'm not going to link to it -- you already know what I'm talking about, because he blows the mystery, as any reviewer has to. I would have had to, if I hadn't been tapped to cover other movies this week. But because I'm blogging, I'm telling you: Read the reviews after you've come back from the theater.
Elsewhere: An essential round-up of films by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan at the Harvard Film Archive (it's easy, there are only four), including last year's Cannes hit "Climates." Lemony Snicket's at the Brattle tonight, followed by an academic deconstruction of movies like "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" at tomorrow night's "Grindhouse panel." The Gay and Lesbian Film/Video Festival continues at the MFA.
Or you could just take the kids to "Shrek the 3rd" like the rest of the country will be doing.
