Julia Loipersberger

Author's posts

Sex Drive – Adelaide Film Festival – Palace Nova Cinemas

Let’s face it – love (and sex) pretty much makes the world go round. Sex Drive, a compilation of short films about all aspects of the most important topic, examines themes as diverse as the universe of a prostitute who wants to get out of the game and risks everything to start a normal life (portrayed in the …

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Joy – Adelaide Film Festival – Palace Nova Cinema

In current times, Greece is – sadly – not known as a joyous, carefree country. The bleakness and despair of post-austerity measures is highlighted in Ilias Yannakakis’ 2012 film, Joy, which focusses on a desperate middle-aged woman who walks into a doctor’s clinic and kidnaps a baby. The moments of disturbing maternal affection showered on the …

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Adelaide Film Festival – The Selfish Giant

As frequently happens with movies that are ‘based on’ books or other stories, I failed to see how Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant bore any real resemblance to the gorgeous Oscar Wilde fairytale of the same name. Perhaps that is because I was too busy sobbing into my tissues through the whole film. A bleak, …

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Adelaide Film Festival – Will you still love me tomorrow?

In this rom-com with a twist, boy meets boy. Boy falls in love with boy. Boy tries to figure out how to tell his wife (who wants another baby) that he is in fact gay – and has been gay since long before they married. Add to this mix the adorable protagonist Weicheng’s (Richie Ren) …

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Adelaide Film Festival – Sharknado

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s a live, angry shark in a tornado. Or make that hundreds of hungry sharks. Yes, that really is the premise of surprise Hollywood schlockfest Sharknado. Starring the indomitable Tara Reid (what has she done to her face), Ian Ziering (for those who remember, an …

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Adelaide Film Festival 2013 – The Stranger by the Lake

This film, like the naïve protagonist Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), is languorous, seductive, very nice to look at but a little bit confusing. A French film which caused a significant stir at Cannes in 2013 (largely due to significant amount of non-simulated sex), The Stranger by the Lake focusses on the ‘cruising’ scene for gay men …

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Adelaide Film Festival 2013 – Behind the Veil

There are few things more topical in 2013 than the treatment of women in Islamic countries around the world. A composition of short films focussing on issues concerning Muslim-women throughout the world, Behind the Veil focusses a lens on subjects which are often taboo or misunderstood. This compilation includes an exploration of the way modern Australian society projects its own …

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Adelaide Film Festival – ‘Like father, like son’

Imagine living out a wildly improbable scenario which was extremely unlikely to occur, but if and when it did has the power to invoke enormous consequences and change to every facet of your life. This is what Ryota Nonomiya, successful businessman, uptight disciplinarian and ambitious father is faced with in this Japanese drama when he …

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OZASIA – The Lonely Wife (Charulata) – Satyajit Ray

What is generally regarded as acclaimed Indian director Satyajit Ray’s most accomplished film, the 1964 masterpiece, Charulata (The Lonely Wife) screened during the OzAsia Festival to a sizeable crowd. Rich, beautiful and lonely Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee in the titular role) is sick of life in her gilded cage in turn-of-the-century 1900s Calcutta. Despite the adoration …

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OzAsia- Film – Night of Silence (Lal Gece)

Nobody really likes the idea of a 50+ year old man marrying a girl barely into her teens as part of an arranged marriage, particularly against the background of recent – tragic – media attention relating to the terrible consequences of such an intergenerational relationship. Even worse is the concept of imagining the act of consummating such …

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