Close Up

30 - 31 March 2018: Take Two: Carrie / Thelma

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The sexual awakening of two shy young women raised according to fundamentalist religious beliefs seemingly sparks telekinetic abilities they struggle to understand and control.

Carrie
Brian De Palma
1976 | 98 min | Colour | Digital

"[Forty] years on, Brian De Palma’s Carrie – an adaption of Stephen King’s breakout 1974 debut novel – has long been a bona fide classic, capable of inspiring its own Halloween costumes, sitcom references, cross-generational dialogues, and [...] studio remake. Looking at the film today [...] it seems like a miracle it was ever made in the first place. Released in 1976, at a moment when major Hollywood studios were still improbably willing to give space to the personal visions of young directors, Carrie remains a wicked piece of work: a film deeply committed to making its fragile teenage heroine’s sufferings palpable, pitiable, and relatable – but only so that it can twist the knife in deeper when the time comes." – Max Nelson

Thelma
Joachim Trier
2017 | 116 min | Colour | Digital
Norwegian with English subtitles

"In the new film from Joachim Trier (Reprise), an adolescent country girl (Eili Harboe) has just moved to the city to begin her university studies, with the internalized religious severity of her quietly domineering mother and father (Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Henrik Rafaelsen) always in mind. When she realizes that she is developing an attraction to her new friend Anja (Okay Kaya), she begins to manifest a terrifying and uncontrollable power that her parents have long feared. To reveal more would be a crime; let’s just say that this fluid, sharply observant, and continually surprising film begins in the key of horror and ends somewhere completely different." – Film Society of Lincoln Center