Fantastic Fest 2011

Actor Pascal Cervo live in person!

A young man, the manager and single employee of a small rustic cinema scheduled for closure, has a secret life. After the last show of the evening he prowls the streets, looking for a woman who reminds him of his past. Most nights he finds one, and most subsequent mornings the police find a dead body with the left ear removed. As he goes about his routine, showing Renoir's FRENCH CAN CAN to audiences of two or three and creating his ghoulish tableaux in his private cellar apartment, we begin to learn more about him. So does the lovely young actress who holds a special place in his heart.

The stylishness and obsessive perspective of THE LAST SCREENING will lead many viewers to think of the classic Italian giallos of the '70s, but the delberate pace of the story and the attention to surface details might also bring to mind certain pre-nouvelle vague characteristics of the French art cinema. The tension here is not only the tension we feel when watching a strange young man do terrible things, but also the tension between the cinema of bloodletting and the cinema of understated tact. It gets to you a little. You may even begin to understand a little more than you might wish to. (Lars Nilsen)