Duet for Cannibals
All-Time Favorites
•
1h 45m
Directed by Susan Sontag | 105 mins | 1969
In the late ’60s, a Swedish studio invited essayist, novelist, critic, cinephile, and all-around intellectual dynamo Susan Sontag to make her directorial debut in Stockholm. The resulting film, revolving around the quadrangular relationship between an arrogant ex-revolutionist German intellectual exile, his elegant wife, their Swedish student secretary, and the earnest secretary’s bride-to-be, is a roundelay of partner-swapping that gradually drifts toward uncharted territory, gamesmanship that broaches the surreal and violent. Defying literal-minded interpretation, Duet for Cannibals is both an illustrative companion to Sontag’s criticism and an introduction to a startlingly original filmmaker.
A Metrograph Pictures release.
Up Next in All-Time Favorites
-
Vive L'Amour
Leaving May 1
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 118 mins | 1994
Tsai’s second feature is a masterful evocation of urban loneliness and longing, quietly devastating even in its forays into something like slowed-down slapstick. A love triangle takes shape when three people—including a repressed funera...
