By Rodarte
Fashion designers from
Pasadena, California, sisters Kate and Laura
Mulleavy, together named Rodarte after their motherÕs maiden name, first showed
their clothing line during fashion week in spring 2005. Criterion asked the
sisters, whoÕve since become fixtures of the New York fashion world and whose
clothes have been inspired by films in the Criterion Collection (from Late
Spring to The Double Life of Vˇronique) to pick their ten favorite Criterion releases, and they
happily obliged.
1. Beauty
and the Beast
Beauty and
the Beast serves as a metaphor
for the artistic process, exploring the creative through mythology and the arc
of the fairy tale. One must travel to dark and mysterious places in order
to be saved. Diamond tears, spilled for those brief and elusive moments in
life, offer a glimpse of universal clarity. This movie, in its own way,
displays a sense of perfection . . . but it is fleeting, as if seen in a
rearview mirror. Ultimately, it is an instruction manual on how to fall in love
with another, with oneself, and with true beauty. Cocteau never suggests
that all fairy tales end happily ever after, and maybe it is better this
way.
2. In the
Mood for Love
Epic.
Wagnerian. A love story told in vibrant colors, sound, chinoiseries, wallpaper,
and sheets of rain.
3. Hiroshima
mon amour
Hiroshima
mon amour has possibly the
best opening of any film, ever. History unfolds in a dreamlike narrative;
love and passion intersect with violence, beauty, and the foreign. The notion
of romantic love is blinding, intoxicating, horrifying, and breathtaking .
. . like the afterglow of a nuclear holocaust.
4. Fanny and
Alexander
BergmanÕs
intended swan song offers amazing insight into the vision of one of the worldÕs
greatest auteurs. Fanny and Alexander is a meditation on art, beauty, religion, and family. Personal
history is both truth and fairy tale; it unfolds like a dream or a Swedish
summer night where darkness never comes. In the end, Bergman asserts that oneÕs
past has the power to both save and destroy. This idea is profoundly hopeful,
and yet terribly devastating.
5. Picnic at
Hanging Rock
The first time
I watched this film, I felt truly alone and isolated. The juxtaposition of
European society and civility with the untamed landscape results in vast and expansive mystery. There is a desperation
that comes from watching
this film. Of course, this could only end in one way: the cannibalism of
Victorian sensibilities.
6. Jules and
Jim
I love the
moment in French cinema this film captures: the height of the French new wave,
when Truffaut honestly believed he could lead a revolution against the
bourgeois establishment with a camera and impeccable taste. It is funny,
however, that any truly brilliant piece of political artistry eventually
becomes seen as established taste. No matter how you view the film, as a
feat of aestheticism or a revolution of sorts, it is incredibly stunning and
thought provoking.
7. The
Silence of the Lambs
This is one of
our all-time favorite films. Silence of the Lambs is a truly brilliant and uniquely American
horror film. It exists as a fragile spiderweb: at the heart of this web a
strange and delicate truth remains trapped, always with the hope of escape . .
. The intimacy that develops and exists between the characters can be destroyed
at any moment, and that is the true terror that propels the action. Ultimately,
these fragile relationships are used to explore the most perverted aspects of
the American dream: excess, greed, and violence.
8. Metropolitan
This film makes
me glad that we are from Northern California, raised by two dreamers, but
secretly jealous that weÕre not Rockefellers or Vanderbilts. Sometimes we canÕt
tell if we love these characters or despise them . . . you know, sort of
like your old stuffed animals.
9. Amarcord
This movie is almost
a complete inversion of Louis MalleÕs Au revoir les enfants, where the horrors of Vichy France are made all
the more terrible juxtaposed to the innocence and ideal of youth.
Here, you have the violence of Mussolini and terror of Fascist
Italy completely erased by the antics of a bunch of horny teenagers. This
film is visually gorgeous; the scene where the peacock flies in the snow always
stays in mind. What makes this film so interesting is the notion that idealized
beauty is not enough—visual beauty is grounded by the humanity and
sometimes fallibility of the characters.
10. La
collectionneuse
Eric Rohmer is
one of our all-time favorite directors. All of the ŅSix Moral TalesÓ contained
in the box set are brilliant. La collectionneuse is our favorite. It is sparse and dreamlike.
Every second moves languidly; every detail revealed with warmth . . . Time
unfolds in this film just like summer.