In a dark, claustrophobic apartment a sick elderly woman is accompanied by her son, her nurse and her lover and a former teacher who is now unemployed. She relies on them, as they do on her, for a place to live. None are able to leave whilst finding no solace in remaining in the apartment and scheme to find ways of manipulating the others to get some kind of personal gain. In the process everyone’s darkest secrets are revealed.
A landmark in the career of legendary filmmaker Béla Tarr, Autumn Almanac is his first abandonment of social realism for a new kind of formalism that employs artificial light sources and an overt use of mise en scène. Out on DVD 14th of March.
