Il Mare

2000 KR Hyun-seung Lee
✰✰✰ 1/2

Beautiful, soft sci-fi romance about two lonely people finding solace and each other through the magical power of an irrational red mailbox—which delivers letters through time. The beginning: we skim the surface of water, gliding toward a pretty house along the seashore. Fog drifts, up from the surface. Mood set; will remain. Both main characters live here, though years apart. The mailbox is their connection. One puts a letter in, the other takes it out. Will they overcome this time displacement? Surely, and with what fantasy! The style is architectural, which complements the story, itself a dream house. Camera movements are sweeping, precise. Few films move as elegantly. Watch it when you're a dreamer, in the mood for love. Original title: Siworae.

Cunnamulla

2000 AU Dennis O'Rourke
✰✰

Troubling Aussie documentary about an "end of the world" outback town filled with junkies, whores, deadbeats, and other forgotten people that the filmmaker exploits into a cinematic freak show. Humanity crops up, but credit the humans, not the camera. Film isn't well-made, dirty form matching what it believes are dirty subjects—silently priding itself on being rough, not "romanticizing". Talking heads are mixed with other shots (a dogcatcher at work, a DJ with ambitions) and narrative gained because the filmmaker spent a year. But, wait: there's value crammed between the cuts and fades, as this place is real. A portrait of a town living contentedly without hope, filled with residents who don't seem to mind.