Kung-fu Master!

Dir. Agnes Varda (1989).
Varda’s disturbing flick is the account of a brief, doomed love affair between a 15-year-old boy and a divorced independent 40-year-old woman. The boy, one of the woman’s daughter’s schoolmates, a loner who feels left out of his adolescent society, is played by the director’s own son, Mathieu Demy, and the picture was co-written by Jane Birkin, who plays the older woman. It’s quite moving and draws a delicate line between the pure and the profane—exactly how far the relationship goes in a physical sense is never exactly spelled out.

Tue., Feb. 23, 12:30, 4 & 7:30 p.m., 2010