Strange Encounters
Curated by Hope Rangaswami, this season explores the transformative power of chance encounters through five unusual and underseen films from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Chance encounters can puncture reality, disrupt normal rhythms, and open up other ways of being, including alternative forms of communication and intimacy. The films in this season explore these ideas in different ways, varying in style, genre, and region. Though the films differ in approach, they each straddle the millennium – a time of transition, which is reflected in the profound transformations their protagonists undergo.
Friday Night
Claire Denis, 2002, 86 min
Introduced by Hope Rangaswami
The night before she’s set to move in with her boyfriend, Laure (Valérie Lemercier) is driving over to a friend’s place for dinner. But as a transit strike suspends her in a citywide traffic jam, she finds herself in an urban purgatory, her car the only barrier between her and the pent-up energy of Paris at a standstill. When a handsome stranger (Vincent Lindon) knocks on her window, that boundary collapses, and her night takes a detour. Exquisitely erotic and nearly wordless, Friday Night tells a sensuous story of what happens when two bodies collide. Set to a gorgeous score by Tindersticks’ Dickon Hinchliffe, this enchanting tale of transient intimacy showcases Claire Denis’ exceptional ability to let bodies do the talking.
Crash
David Cronenberg, 1996, 100 min
Introduced by Hope Hopkinson
From the moment Howard Shore’s hypnotic score plays over the opening titles, it’s clear that there’s nothing quite like David Cronenberg’s Crash. After a detached film producer (James Spader) gets into a nasty car accident with an alluring doctor (Holly Hunter), he is drawn into an underground subculture of people with a kink for traffic collisions. Transfixed by the erotic, regenerative power of near-death experiences, Spader is reborn into a world of twisted metal, scarred flesh, and shattered glass, baptised by blood and other bodily fluids. There’s a mesmerising strangeness that permeates Crash, which is as titillating as it is unsettling, as clinical as it is intimate.
Compensation
Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999, 92 min
Introduced by Grace Barber-Plentie
Zeinabu irene Davis’s debut feature follows two Black women, Malindy and Malaika, living in Chicago at opposite ends of the twentieth century. Both characters are portrayed by the Deaf actor Michelle A. Banks, around whom Davis and screenwriter Marc Arthur Chéry crafted the film. Malindy and Malaika’s stories both begin on a beach, where they each encounter a man (played in both cases by John Earl Jelks) who will alter their lives forever. These parallel narratives explore the complexities of love between Deaf and hearing people and the societal pressures that threaten its existence. Set to a score that combines ragtime and African percussion, Compensation draws on silent film techniques and weaves in archival photography to capture pivotal moments in African American history that shape her characters’ fates.
The Annihilation of Fish
Charles Burnett, 1999, 102 min
Introduced by Hope Rangaswami
Charles Burnett’s The Annihilation of Fish is a subversive romantic comedy from one of American independent cinema’s most distinctive voices. Fish (James Earl Jones), a Jamaican immigrant recently released from a psychiatric facility, wrestles with demons only he can see. Meanwhile, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave) has recently broken up with her imaginary lover, the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini. When these two eccentric outcasts become neighbours, they develop a relationship that reveals the risks and rewards of vulnerability. A compassionate exploration of mental illness, age, gender, and race, the film redefines who and what belongs in the rom-com.
The Hole
Tsai Ming-liang, 1998, 95 min
Introduced by Hope Rangaswami
The year 2000 is days away, and Taiwan is inundated with rain. The relentless downpour hardly matters, as much of the population has evacuated, fleeing a virus that causes people to behave like bugs. Among the few who remain are two lonely tenants (Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei) of a dilapidated apartment building. When a plumber leaves a gaping hole in the wall that separates this pair of strangers, they develop an unusual connection defined by both tension and longing. Set to songs by the Hong Kong pop star Grace Chang The Hole is interspersed with vivid musical interludes which become an outlet for unspoken feelings and fantasies.