Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 338: Wed Dec 4

Under the Sun of Satan (Pialat, 1987): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.45pm


This presentation, which is also being screened on December 30this part of the ‘Maurice Pialat and the New French Realism’ season. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Maurice Pialat's high-powered adaptation of Georges Bernanos (whose fiction has previously provided the basis for two Bresson films) won the best film award at the Cannes film festival in 1987, which occasioned a great deal of controversy. A dark film both literally and figuratively, it follows the spiritual crisis of Father Donissan (Gerard Depardieu) and his curious relation to a young woman named Mouchette (Sandrine Bonnaire); Pialat himself plays the father superior. Uncompromisingly rigorous and harsh, Pialat's remarkable film isn't for every taste—acceptance of Bernanos' world isn't an easy matter—but it is certainly a major work by a major filmmaker, with one of Depardieu's strongest performances.
Jonathan Rosenbaum 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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