Dear Shaded
Viewers and Diane,
Keep the Lights On, Ira Sachs' delicate new feature,
came to Bristol last night with the first snow. A candid and intimate memoir
loosely set in Manhattan, the film dwells on a decade-long relationship in the
life of its characters, covering the years just before and after their millennium's
dawn. Thure Lindhardt is incredible as Danish filmmaker Erik Rothman, and
we witness as love pushes its way through his life as it passes by, how it
interweaves with him, painfully, gleefully so, in the elegant figure of Paul
Lucy. Paul, just as wonderfully portrayed by Zachary Booth, is a literary
lawyer with an increasingly worrisome drug addiction, sweet and selfish, gentle, independent and vulnerable and in love, undoubtedly, too. The camera gently
leads us through their chaptered story in a poetically drifting way, and Sachs'
offer is one of details and watercolours, of routine and small pains entangled
in sheets. Under his soft spotlights is the simple, fragile yet persistent nature
of love, with its misfortunes and its kindness, resilience, severity and radiance. Keep the Lights On is Ira
Sachs' fifth feature film, and winner of the 2012 Teddy Award in Berlin.
images via emptykingdom.com
Later,
Silvia
