"Compellingly Beautiful Weird Art House Fantasy"
Beautifully shot black and white fairy tale weirdness abounds as Eureka brings out Rainer Sarnet's film version of Andrus Kivirähk's bestselling novel Rehepapp on Blu-ray.
We're in the pagan Estonian equivalent of Brothers Grimm fairytale land. Plague roams the land - literally, when it isn't asking to be carried across a river in the form of a beautiful girl or taking on various animal forms. When a young Baroness comes to visit the local chateau owned by Dieter HUMAN CENTIPEDE Laser, young village lad Hans falls head over heels in love with her.
Young village lass Lina is in love with Hans and soon both of them are making deals with shady witches and possibly even Satan himself in exchange for love potions and spells to make things even more complicated.
Meanwhile it turns out you can escape the plague if you wear your trousers on your head because then the pestilence will be confused and think you have two bottoms. And then there are the supernatural kraats - creatures made from discarded bones and tree branches - who have to be kept busy or they turn nasty.
NOVEMBER is two hours of gorgeous, hypnotic, compelling black and white cinematography. The plot doesn't exactly take centre stage here but the imagery is so glorious it doesn't really matter. As you may have gathered from the above the movie has a Terry Gilliam by way of Carl Dreyer feel - a bizarre and off-kilter mix of scatological gags and dreamlike shots that make you want to freeze frame.
Eureka's disc offers you the option of switching off the subtitles and there's a trailer. Purchasers of the first pressing will also get a booklet with an essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.
NOVEMBER is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 13th May 2019
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