Let’s get metaphysical! Existentialist cinema is back, if anyone cares

The philosophy was embraced by film noir, the French New Wave and modern hitmen questioning life’s purpose. Now dust off your turtlenecks, for Sirāt and a new version of Albert Camus’ The Stranger look set to make ennui on-trend again “For it all to be consummated, to feel less alone, I had only to wish for a big crowd on the day of my execution, and for them to greet me with cries of hate.” The lacerating signoff of Albert Camus ’s L’Étranger isn’t a collection of words you’ll see appearing as life advice in some influencer’s Instagram caption any time soon. In the age of vapid social media self-help, François Ozon’s new film adaptation of the existentialist masterpiece rears up like a great monolith. Eighty-four years after the novel was published, that’s rather unexpected; as far as IP goes, L’Étranger (The Stranger) was probably some way behind Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on the film industry’s revival list. Does this mean that existentialism is suddenly back in vogue? Or i...

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt review – experimental film pulls on the senses

Sundance film festival: Raven Jackson’s gorgeous, sparsely worded debut film evokes the non-linear memories of one Black woman in Mississippi

There will be a moment in All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the gorgeous, unconventional debut from Raven Jackson, when the film’s spell works. It may be in the first 15 minutes, lulled by Mississippi’s lush soundscape and meditative shots of a southern summer, or an extended take in a hospital delivery room. It could wait until the final scene, an ode to memories already recorded and yet to come.

The pull of this sparsely worded, deeply sensitive film will probably depend on what triggers one’s personal sentimentality and, more pertinently, how much you know about it going in. The plot is so loosely outlined, and the camera so frequently turned to hands over faces, that it could be difficult, sans context, to pick up on its ambitious logic: a series of non-chronological memories in the life of one Black woman, connected by the senses of touch and sound and particularly attuned to the lingering feel of one’s skin on another.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt premiered at the Sundance film festival and will be released later this year

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