A while ago I wrote a blog about the most uncomfortable films I have seen, which I can only watch once a year at most.
These are some of the most unconformable films I’ve seen recently… The kind of films where you can’t move from your seat afterwards or when you do, you feel like having a shower straight afterwards.
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Martha Marcy May Marlene
Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to re-assimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult. -
Requiem for a Dream
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island individuals are shattered when their addictions become stronger. -
Shame
In New York City, Brandon’s carefully cultivated private life which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction is disrupted when his sister Sissy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay. -
Irréversible
Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. -
Trust
A teenage girl is targeted by an online sexual predator. -
Hard Candy
A mature 14-year old girl meets a charming 32-year old photographer on the Internet. Suspecting that he is a pedophile, she goes to his home in an attempt to expose him.
I wrote that a while ago and I have more films to add that list. Films which I can not watch more than once a year because they are psychologically too heavy to take in one year. You can see themes which are uncomfortable (drugs/rape/abuse/etc)
Heavy
Drug-dealer Sev and his equally broken girlfriend Maddie accept a risky deal from an old childhood friend, setting off an irreversible chain of events.
Swallow
Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.
Pieces of a woman
When a young mother’s home birth ends in unfathomable tragedy, she begins a year-long odyssey of mourning that fractures relationships with loved ones in this deeply personal story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.
Flashbacks of a fool
An aging Hollywood star, Joe Scott, lives a life of narcissistic hedonism, observed by his laconic personal assistant, Ophelia. The death of his childhood best friend, Boots, takes our protagonist, and the movie, into an extended flashback to a sea-side town in 1970’s Britain.
Selling Isobel/Apartment 407
A thriller based on true events, featuring the real victim in true life playing the main charter. It’s about a woman who got locked in, drugged, held against her will and sold to numerous men for 3 days in an apartment in central London. It’s a film about her fight for survival all the way to the gruesome end.
I didn’t know the main actor played herself and I can’t even imagine the impact of this. Truly horrific but also must be watched for its absolute importance.
And there are two film documentaries I have to add to the list, although I could add more.
Tell me who I am
Alex trusts his twin, Marcus, to tell him about his past after he loses his memory. But Marcus is hiding a dark family secret.
Rewind
Digging through the vast collection of his father’s home videos, a young man reconstructs the unthinkable story of his boyhood and exposes vile abuse passed through generations.
