Review of Post Tenebras Lux (2012) by Cole J — 21 Jan 2014

Look. You don't have to like "Post Tenebras Lux"; it levels with you early on its campy freakiness. "FUCKING WHAT" is all I kept thinking to myself watching it -- and by the end, audibly said -- and that's about as much a review as writer-director (I guess there was a script?) Carlos Reygadas wants and would expect from any given person. You thought "To The Wonder" played like a Terrence Malick parody? Try "Lux" on for bizarro size. You're in or you're out. Something this abstract and avant garde, there's not much of a window for even standalone appreciation but doesn't connect.

Okay, naysayers out? Huddle up and listen close. I loved "Post Tenebras Lux". I love pretty much all movies like this; tough to seek out, and even tougher to comprehend. "Lux" puts "Upstream Color" to shame in terms of knotty mosaics. Or at least I think. It basically boils down to whether or not you have, not only the patience to watch this, but how much enjoyment you derive from seeing random strange images, "characters" you have to describe in quotes, and scenes that repeat and overlap as visual paradoxes unto themselves. Pretentious? Yeah, I guess. The better it sits with you the more you'll want to lick that phrase, though.

"Post Tenebras Lux" translates literally as "after darkness light". I don't know if there should be a comma after "darkness". That's maybe too much of a segregation. And Reygadas, he's anything but classifiable, the keeper of his own crypt of optic, unforgettable rhythm. (84/100).