年轻的嫂子

暑假将至，十岁的格洛丽亚陪同身为护士的母亲安东尼娅去医院上班。格洛丽亚对医院早已熟悉，经常独自探索。有一天，她遇到了同样十岁的索菲亚。索菲亚来医院是因为她的祖母：比萨·弗朗西斯卡，一位患有阿尔茨海默症的精神治疗师，因家中发生意外而住院。索菲亚和母亲西蒙娜对比萨的下一步安排意见不一。西蒙娜坚持认为她应该暂时留在医院；索菲亚则渴望将祖母送回乡下的家中。格洛丽亚和索菲亚梦想着离开医院，而她们的母亲——都是单亲妈妈，则与她们建立了信任和相互支持的纽带。死亡与重生的循环对格洛丽亚、索菲亚、安东尼娅和西蒙娜来说意义深远。当比萨即将离世时，安东尼娅负责她的临终关怀。在乡下，他们发现一个社区正在等待比萨，准备为流浪的灵魂祈祷，以便他们能够继续前行。

明朝中叶，西北边城，青楼女子接连被残杀，隐匿线索直指边关军营，神捕白展飞奉命调查，却屡屡受阻，无奈下只得暗中探查。然而当他拨开层层迷雾，竟发现此案潜藏着一场不可告人的惊天阴谋。喋血孤城，命悬一线。（影剧备字〔2023〕第1669号）

　　拥有一切的男子都俊，妻子和小孩都在国外生活，也因此他的疑心病变得更重了。某日他一个人喝完酒徘徊时，遇到了一位谜样的女子世莲，陷入她的魅力之中的都俊也因此卷入了某起事件……

　　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.