Marianne Christensen Movies

Veteran experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth explores the nature of eroticism and his own sensual fantasies and appetites in this personal documentary. In Det Erotiske Menneske (aka Erotic Man), Leth travels around the world as he recreates the same scene: a nude woman lies on a bed in a hotel room, thinking out loud about the man she loves who has gone away. Leth visits the Caribbean, South America and Asia as he sets up casting sessions with a variety of different women and shoots the scene over and over again, in different hotel rooms with many different actresses while achieving similar results. While initially Leth insists this is a dramatization of a moment from his own past, with each take it becomes obvious that he's actually obsessing over a fantasy, and it's meaning seems to change each time he tries to bring it back to life. During downtime from his shooting schedule, Leth obsesses over the female form, discovers he has a hard time turning women down for the project, and ponders his own relationship with his lover Dorothie Laguerre. Produced in part by Lars von Trier, Erotic Man was an official selection at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Students of ballet, and those who aspire to understand what all the fuss is about, will particularly appreciate this black-and-white documentary, which closely follows the rehearsal process of the famous ballet originally choreographed by Adolphe Adam, Giselle. The focus here is entirely on the process by which ballet master Henning Kronstram conveys the spirit and the endless details of the ballet to his dancers. Kronstram is particularly adept at miming and acting out for his dancers in a way that illuminates the meaning of each gesture, which he wants them to understand so as to perform them better. Dance aficionados will be particularly pleased by the single-minded focus on the dancers, rather than on artsy effects of fancy camera angles. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This modern update of Romeo And Juliet finds two young lovers torn between family loyalty and love in Copenhagen. Rami is a Palestinian operative who falls for Julie, a lonely woman who works at a service station. Lines from Shakespeare are recited by a laundromat manager who serves as a one-man Greek chorus at the appropriate times. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi