More

Classics from La Semaine de la critique 
1969/color/110 min. | Scr: Barbet Schroeder, Paul Gégauff; dir: Barbet Schroeder; w/ Mimsy Farmer, Klaus Grunberg, Heinz Engelmann.

Born in Tehran and raised in Iran, Africa and Colombia, Schroder may be the most cosmopolitan filmmaker to surface from the Nouvelle Vague's wellspring of activity. Throughout his career he has switched between documentaries, Hollywood thrillers and international art films, along the way giving Mickey Rourke one of his most memorable roles (Barfly) and garnering Jeremy Irons his only Oscar win (Reversal of Fortune). In 1962 he helped launch Les Films du Losange and began producing films by Rohmer, Rivette and Fassbinder while also acting in a few of them. That the company remains in business is a testament to Schroeder's lasting commitment to stimulating and relevant cinema. Such is the case with his directorial debut: largely improvised and set to an eclectic Pink Floyd score (their first ever), More traces the volatile relationship between a German student and his American girlfriend as they commit themselves to a life of hedonism amid the craggy, sun-soaked shores of Ibiza, rendered in all of its Mediterranean splendor by Nestor Almendros, the master of "magic hour" cinematography. Rarely screened, More weaves a dream-like trance of Balearic debauchery, stoned mysticism and primal urges. "[Farmer and Grunberg are] trying to live out a bootleg Byron fantasy of metamorphosing from pasty, civilized, uptight Northerners into Mithraic Philistines ('I wanted the sun and I went after it. I didn't care if I got burned')…More establishes the story Schroeder returned to over the years: a couple conjoined by obsession, first in a kind of mentor-student relationship, later in a mutual ante-upping game. It endures better than a [typical] freakout dropout time-capsule by chronicling without buying stock in junkie romance and mind-expansion pamphleteering."—Nick Pinkerton, Moving Image Source.

View the film's trailer here.