女狱秘闻

　　故事发生在某女子监狱中。深夜子时，万籁俱寂，女囚周露（李佳 饰）面无表情地环视着阴暗的牢房，压抑着狂野的情绪，时间一分一秒过去，她像下定决心般把双手伸向了睡在一旁的另一位狱友。黑夜过去，白昼来临，在遭众狱友轮番凌辱后，周露被管教经纬带进了发泄室中。监房高处窗中射入刺眼的阳光，阳光穿透了周露伤痕累累的胳膊，那是她数次自杀未果的标记。对着墙上斑驳的镜片，她陷入痛苦难奈的回忆之中，冥冥间她似乎看到了早亡的父亲，以及那个沾血的洋娃娃，又似乎看见了继父那双伸向自己的魔爪，还有被逼的疯癫的母亲，随后又出现了向自己施暴的丈夫，周露彻底崩溃了......

　　艾瑞克经营一家摩托车修理店，和自己的女朋友以及她的年幼女儿幸福的生活在一起，然而这种平静的生活被一个名叫亨利的陌生人打破了，艾瑞克过去的黑暗秘密阴影开始笼罩这个家庭。我们真的可以完全告别过去吗？我们可能已经改变了，但是有些过去的行为却继续如影随行。　　在《立体声》中，一个男人充满热血、没有丝毫胆怯的赎罪行为让我们印象深刻。

　　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.