SUTURE & THE MAKIOKA SISTERS AT THE METROGRAPH

New York's Metrograph presents two special screenings with in person appearances, highlighting two essential pieces of cinema.

Saturday May 13th 7pm
SUTURE (1996 / DCP)
Directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee in conversation with Steven Soderbergh following the film.

Lumped in with the then-contemporary “neo-noir” cycle but actually quite unlike anything else on the scene, Siegel and McGehee’s brain-twisting murder mystery in sordid black-and-white widescreen has Dennis Haysbert as the classic fall guy, stricken with amnesia after his near-identical half-brother (Michael Harris) swaps their identities and pins a family murder on him—all this before a plastic surgeon called Renee Descartes (Mel Harris) shows up. A cult item whose advocates include Steven Soderbergh, who will be on hand to plumb the depths of its mysteries with the filmmakers.

Saturday May 13th 2pm
THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983 / 35mm Print)
Introduced by critic and historian Ian Buruma

Among the greatest Japanese films of the 1980s, Kon Ichikawa’s wistful adaptation of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novel about the four daughters of a prosperous Osaka family in decline, set in the before-the-storm year of 1938, is a movie marked by moments of unspoken longing and overpowering beauty (a parade of gorgeous kimono fabrics, a viewing of the spring cherry blossoms) born forth on an anachronistic-yet-somehow-perfect synth score. At once a touching requiem for both the prewar era and classic Japanese cinema.

The Makioka Sisters is presented by Metrograph and New Directions in celebration of the official launch of two major discoveries by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki: an early novella, Devils in Daylight, and his astonishing final work, The Maids—now available in English. Both will be available in the Metrograph book store.

Program notes by The Metrograph.