Is Nina Menkes a female Guy Maddin? The trailer for her latest, Phantom Love, lacks the playfulness that drives MAddin's work but the pair certainly share a love for black and white, German expressionist tinged images. This looks like simply stellar work that resists easy categorization but here's the synopsis from sales agent Katapult Films:
PHANTOM LOVE is a surreal, highly visual drama about an enmeshed family, in which violence and trauma are steadily percolating, just beneath the surface. The lead character is LULU (Marina Shoif): a very beautiful, but angry and isolated woman, who lives alone, and works in a casino in Korea-town, Los Angeles. Lulu’s relationship with her lover is charged but emotionally disconnected. Lulu’s younger sister, NITZAN (Juliette Marquis), is in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, caused in part by prescription medication. Lulu feels emotionally invaded by her mother, who wants to come to town and stay with Lulu in order to try and help the younger sister—but this feels like a further intense invasion, and Lulu refuses.
Like all Nina Menkes’s work, PHANTOM LOVE positions an alienated woman against a harsh, inhospitable landscape—this time, within a family. Structured like Chinese boxes, with each scene opening onto a another, still deeper inside, PHANTOM LOVE is a powerful document about one woman’s descent into self.
Phantom Love Trailer (embedded Quicktime)
This doesn't remind me of Guy Maddin at all but it does look a bit interesting. and definitely strange.