Eros

Colour, 35 mm
Hong Kong, China, USA, France, Italy, Luxembourg, 2004, 104 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Despite being paralyzed by a stroke in 1985, from time to time Italian directing master Michelangelo Antonioni sits in the director’s chair. Made up of different stories, Eros is the second project on which he has worked with other directors; the other occasion came in 1995 when he co-directed the psychological drama Beyond the Clouds with Wim Wenders. In “The Hand”, Wong Kar-wai returns to his recurrent theme: the loneliness of a man in the grips of romantic passion: It’s Hong Kong, 1963, and a young tailor named Chang falls hard for a prostitute. In “Equilibrium”, Steven Soderbergh returns to New York circa 1955 with a story about a psychiatrist, his neurotic patient and an arousing vision of a beautiful woman. Set in the present at a Tuscan holiday resort, “The Dangerous Thread of Things” concerns a man whose vacation with his wife is interrupted by the presence of another woman. The three stories pay tribute to the great filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni and his own tribute to the themes of love, sex and desire.

About the director

Steven Soderbergh (b. 1963, Atlanta) is an important independent American director whose filmography includes Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), Out of Sight (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Solaris (2002), Ocean’s Twelve (2004).

Wong Kar-wai (b. 1958, Shanghai). His European reputation rests mainly on the films As Tears Go By (1988), Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004).

Michelangelo Antonioni (b. 1912, Ferrara), legend of European cinema who developed a personal style in the 1960s involving his famed “tetralogy of feelings”: L´Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L´Eclisse (1962) and Red Desert (1964). Other important films include Blow-up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), The Passenger (1975),
Beyond the Clouds (1995).