AMATEUR
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Deadpan, fiercely cynical and extremely funny, Hal Hartley has cemented his reputation as the US independent requiring the closest of scrutiny. This curious director creates a consistently fabulous feature every couple of years, wows an ever expanding audience and then submerges himself in the process once again. Trust, The Unbelievable Truln and Simple Men all garnered international acclaim, successive films bolstering Hartley's swelling reputation as the arbiter of hip. |
If you can't remember the horrible things you have done, are you still responsible? Hal Hartley's arch, cryptic world is instantly recognisable as he turns the action/thriller genre upside-down in Amateur-elaborating on his style of sophisticated one-of-a-kind cinema that never fails to excite, entice and amuse.
Isabelle, (the ever amazing French actor Isabelle Huppert-she wrote to Hartley expressing a desire to work with him!) an ex-nun and struggling porn writer on a mission from God, takes in Thomas, a vicious former pornographer who, having been thrown from a window by his abused and exploited wife, Sophia, has amnesia. A born-again sensitive new age guy who doesn't recall his unsavoury criminal past—which is none the less pursuing him with a view to kill-Thomas tails hopelessly in love with his blue literary angel as they set out to discover his lost identity.