Wishing you could get away this summer? This collection of some of cinema’s most memorably disastrous trips will have you reconsidering the comforts of home. Dreaming of the crystal blue waters of the French Riviera? The existential ennui of Eric Rohmer’s LA COLLECTIONNEUSE should set you straight. Pining for romance under the Italian sun? Just see how it works out for the tourists in Paul Schrader’s THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS. And then there’s the terror of a vacation-home invasion in Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES and the dread-inducing psychological torpor of a dysfunctional family getaway in Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA. Finally, whatever you do, take a lesson from HOUSE and do not, under any circumstances, visit your witchy aunt’s possessed, people-munching domicile . . .
Directed by Eric Rohmer • 1967 • France
Starring Haydée Politoff, Patrick Bauchau, Daniel Pommereulle
A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohe...
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 1977 • Japan
Starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Oba
How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie HOUSE (HAUSU)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of “Scooby-Doo” as directed by Mario Bava? Any...
Directed by Eric Rohmer • 1986 • France
Starring Marie Rivière, María Luisa García, Vincent Gauthier
Eric Rohmer captures the ache of summertime sadness with exquisite poignancy in this luminous tale of self-exploration. The Jules Verne novel of the same name provides the loose inspiration for t...
Directed by Paul Schrader • 1990 • United States
Starring Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson
Two couples are drawn into a dark psychosexual vortex in Paul Schrader’s stylish take on the erotic thriller. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are a British couple hoping to repa...
Directed by Michael Haneke • 1997 • Austria
Starring Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch
Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, FUNNY GAMES spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. ...
Directed by Lucrecia Martel • 2001 • Argentina, Spain
Starring Martín Adjemián, Diego Baenas, Leonora Balcarce
The release of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beaut...
Directed by Catherine Breillat • 2001 • France, Italy
Starring Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo
Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along as Elena explores the dreary seaside ...
