We are joined by special guest Alex Heeney, the founder and editor in chief of Seventh Row, to dive into Luca Guadagnino's 2017 coming-of-age masterpiece, Call Me By Your Name. They talk about their deep personal connections to the film, with Alex recounting her experience at the world premiere at Sundance and Wilson sharing his obsessive journey preparing for the New York Film Festival premiere of the film. Eli discusses the film's sensual direction, and Ben explains why he thinks this is Guadagnino’s most mature work.

Links:

Find more of Alex on Seventh Row. They are hosting a summit celebrating queer and trans stories called Living Out Loud. Check it out here.

Mina Le: why does hollywood love an age gap romance?

Ben’s CMBYN meme video

Women around the fountain video

Call us by your name at our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:14 Introducing Alex Heeney

00:04:00 Our histories with CMBYN

00:21:50 Masculinity and Romance

00:26:03 Narrative structure

00:32:05 Performances

00:37:39 Scenes and blocking

00:41:00 The statue scene

00:47:44 The parents

00:51:20 The peach scene

01:00:30 Age gap discourse

01:10:42 Homophobia and queerness

01:13:05 Cinematography and Marzia

01:31:00 Editing

01:35:36 The Sufjan element

01:39:15 Outro

We continue our series on Akerman with a double-bill of personal documentaries about her mother, and of home. News from Home immediately follows her seminal Jeanne Dielman, and No Home Movie is the final film of Akerman’s filmography. In this episode, we thread the throughline across Akerman’s career in comparing both films, see the influence of structural and slow cinema, and marvel at her capacity for personal artmaking.

Links:

Celine Sciamma on Chantal Akerman

I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman (No Home Movie BTS footage)

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

05:32 Plot summaries and Reactions

17:15 2015 critical reactions to No Home Movie

21:00 Structural films and emotional responses

27:07 Power of the cut

33:41 Akerman and her mother

40:33 Comparing Akerman with Varda

44:36 Private artmaking

48:33 Akerman's career arc

52:13 Preview for next eps

It’s about time. We tackle Chantal Akerman’s Sight and Sound topping Jeanne Dielman, and begin our series on her singular career. Ben introduces Akerman’s career, spotlighting her fierce conviction and crystalline vision, Eli loops in a melodramatic reading, and Wilson zeroes in on an ending that explosively caps off a 3.5h opus. And if you’re struggling with how to approach this film, as entertainment or as art, just remember: it’s about time.

Links:

Behinds the scenes of Jeanne Dielman

Slant magazine interview

Article on Akerman

Wilson’s Letterboxd review

Stephen Gillespie’s Letterboxd review

Angelica Jade Bastien on Longlegs

Make coffee at our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:03:03 General reactions

00:13:26 The S&S list

00:16:24 Akerman's career

00:23:45 Plot summary and structure

00:29:20 Cinematography and spatial representation

00:32:14 Depictions of women and melodrama

00:34:35 How Akerman directs Seyrig

00:37:53 Everything is "real"

00:39:10 Time

00:42:14 Patterning

00:46:40 What triggers the breakdown

00:50:16 Relationship between mother/son

00:57:18 Rituals

00:59:24 The movie exists as many things

01:00:25 It's place as #1 film

01:04:10 Akerman's conviction and vision

01:07:43 Scene dissections

01:13:04 Exterior scenes

01:16:47 Existential crisis

01:19:12 In conversation with cinema and larger culture

01:21:56 Ending

01:30:36 Outro

After a rocky relationship between Deep Cut and Mr. Pablo Larrain, we come back to the final film in Larrain’s “important 20th century white women” trilogy (as Ben describes it). Will Larrain redeem himself with a portrait of the final days of Maria Callas’ life? Or will he and Stephen Knight sh*t the bed again? Wilson praises Angelina Jolie’s comeback performance, Ben praises how pretty the film is, and Eli praises the prop glasses, but is all that enough to get the film over the line? Listen to find out.

Links:

Thomas Flight: Do Musical Biopics Have a Fatal Flaw?

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

03:33 General reactions

10:05 Saving graces of the film

14:10 Narrative

22:33 The Mandrax of it all

24:53 Supporting characters

27:36 Flashbacks and musical biopics

30:50 We pitch Maria Callas biopics

33:01 Pablo Larrain power ranking

38:18 Outro

We are joined by Asian Film Archive programmer Alexander Lee for our second installment in our Hong Sang-soo series! Alex talks to the guys about pairing Hong Sang-soo deep cuts with Eric Rohmer classics, and specifically the pairing of Night and Day with Love in the Afternoon. Eli chats about the narrative motifs that are on display in this film, Wilson tries to unlock the secret of Hong’s use of zooms, and Ben contends with the slimy protagonist of this film.

Singaporean listeners to Deep Cut you can catch Night and Day on July 13th at the Oldham Theatre. Buy tickets here!

Links:

Hong Sang-soo Notarized: Night and Day

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:17 Alex introduces Twin Tales

00:06:45 Film Context

00:10:21 General Reactions

00:20:58 Hong’s big stylistic choices

00:23:22 Narrative Motifs

00:28:30 Yoo-Jung

00:31:55 Sung-nam

00:33:14 Odd patterns

00:37:22 Night and Day vs. Love in the Afternoon

00:40:41 Tech and sex of the 00s

00:42:42 The male mess of Hong

00:45:52 Dream sequences

00:50:54 The look of the film

00:56:18 Being married?

00:59:16 Hong notarized

01:00:40 Opening of the film and Hill of Freedom

01:02:43 Music

01:04:30 More on zooms

01:05:35 Paris

01:07:52 Other small odd things

01:09:24 Preview of Twin Tales

01:13:11 Outro

Deep Cut partners with Asian Film Archive which is presenting Twin Tales: Éric Rohmer and Hong Sang-soo, a special programme featuring six pairings of films by French New Wave director Éric Rohmer and prolific Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. Buy tickets here!

We’ve teased this for YEARS! And it’s finally here. The DC Trio break the ice by introducing notorious Korean director Hong Sang-soo to the canon by talking about a 2006 deep cut, Woman on the Beach. We talk about the pairing with Rohmer’s The Green Ray (our ep. 24), discuss why this feels odd in Hong’s filmography, and debate on what shape this movie looks like. Join us for a lively first foray into the work of Hong Sang-soo.

Links:

Film at Lincoln Center: Hong Sangsoo on Woman on the Beach

The New Yorker: Hong Interview with Dennis Lim

Hong Sang-soo Notarized: Woman on the Beach by Ryan Swen

Get drunk on soju at our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:02:13 Twin Tales: Hong x Rohmer

00:05:00 Our journeys with Hong

00:15:34 Hong Sang-soo Overview

00:24:02 Woman on the Beach Summary and Reactions

00:31:40 Notarized Hong

00:34:03 Whose story is this?

00:41:31 Men vs Women

00:43:09 Some scenes

00:45:06 Characterizations

00:47:28 Comparison with The Green Ray, and others

00:54:38 Cinematography

00:57:21 Diagrams

01:00:54 Restaurant scene

01:02:32 Triangulation

01:05:58 The Ending

01:10:36 Outro

I want to podcast with you. Without speaking. On this episode of Deep Cut Upkeep we step into 1950s Mexico City and dive into the lush world of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. Wilson expands more on his love for the film and why it topped his 2024 film list. Eli talks about the narrative constraints of this (bio)pic about William S. Burroughs. Ben draws links between Queer and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Together, we talk about performance, Guadagnino’s eye for style, debate that Ayahuasca sequence, and end the episode with a quick round of Luca Guadagnino power rankings.

Links:

Natalie’s letterboxd review of Queer

NYFF panel of Queer

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:50 General reactions

08:26 Spoiler warning

09:31 Production context

12:50 Narrative structure

16:30 Craig's performance as Lee

19:12 Blocking and eyelines

21:03 First meeting between Lee and Allerton

25:09 Act 2

27:35 Yagé

29:28 The relationship

36:40 Comparison with In The Mood for Love

40:32 The trip

47:15 The ending

50:55 Comparison to other Guadagnino

58:33 Outro

As voted for on our Patreon, we return to Kelly Reichardt with her 2010 Western, Meek’s Cutoff.

Ben argues that no discussion of the American Western is complete without Reichardt’s film, Wilson highlights the film’s fraught production that miraculously led to its poetic ending, and Eli frames the film within the larger context of America’s problematic Manifest Destiny.

We get serious, analytical and near-academic with Reichardt’s masterwork… all the way until you hear us try on our best impressions of Bruce Greenwood’s Stephen Meek as Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. (?????)

Get lost at our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Links:

Kelly Reichardt on WTF with Marc Maron

Sundance interview

Last of the Buffalo

American Progress

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:42 Plot Summary

00:05:54 General reactions

00:09:22 Eli loves the ending

00:13:24 The film as a Western

00:15:53 Production context

00:18:20 How she got that ending

00:22:10 The Western is distinctly American

00:24:20 American mythology

00:28:21 As "feminist" Western

00:30:59 Stephen Meek

00:33:15 Not your typical Western

00:37:39 Chaos and destruction

00:39:41 Actors

00:40:36 Mishandling of Reichardt's releases

00:45:25 Cinematography

00:50:47 Why 4:3

00:56:33 What's in store for Reichardt

01:00:02 Outro