Johanna, a young drug addict turned nurse, falls into a deep coma after an accident. Doctors miraculously manage to save her from death's doorstep but she now has the power to cure patients by offering them her body. Frustrated by her continued rejection of him, the head doctor is determined to stop her but the grateful patients have other ideas for their saviour.
A startlingly original operatic update of the Joan of Arc story from Hugarian director Kornél Mundruczó, who gives it a grainy immediacy and an experimental quality. Elements of Von Trier surface in this dark, bleak vision which is as atmospheric as his debut feature Pleasant Days. It takes another visit to the East European hospital environment, so devastatingly satirised in The Death of Mr Lazarescu. However, Johanna has a starker, more claustrophobic edge that is more in line with German expressionist cinema than realism. It has a Wagnerian grandeur to it as well as the human darkness evident in writers such as Brecht or Gogol.
This opera has been composed uniquely for the cinema by Zsófia Tallér, but reinventing familiar tales in very alien settings is nothing new, as demonstrated recently in the South African U-Carmen eKhayelitsha. The Maid of Orleans has never looked like this in any of her previous screen incarnations by directors as varied as Luc Besson, Carl Dreyer and Rossellini After the critical acclaim of Hukkle and Control, Joanna continues the revival of the new Hungarian cinema.
DVD extras include a trailer and it will be released on January the 22nd, priced £19.99.
