偷听的女人

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

　　少女艾诺拉·佩妮（Virginia Newcomb 饰）偶然在深夜进入一家破败的歌剧院，乖张吊诡的演员为她表演了六个异乎寻常的故事：《蟾蜍之母》一对美国夫妇来到法国某偏远山镇旅行，在这里结识了一个诡异的老婆婆；《我爱你》德国柏林，走到尽头的婚姻，歇斯底里的偏执男人让他的妻子再也无法忍受着无处不在的狂爱；《梦遗》饱受邪淫梦境困扰的男人，在梦与现实的夹缝中迷失；《事故》真实的死亡对于一个小女孩来说也许过于费解与残酷，然而这就是它真实的原因；《记忆收集》她杀了求死的女人们，她看见并拥有了她们的记忆；《甜食》一度沉浸在甜食和热恋中的情侣，不知不觉走到了情感尽头。

雷米与阿金这对小哥俩，终得与疏离多年的父亲弗拉林共享难得一日。三人游走在初次相见的巨型都市拉各斯，少年窥见钢筋森林的奇观，亦目睹父亲谋生路上的重重难关。此刻整座城市正笼罩在1993年总统大选结果的巨大阴云之下，而父子三人的归家之路，竟也成了选票漩涡中飘摇的未知数。