花之夏 / 石森瑞穗 [HIGR-048]

 美丽的高中女孩露比·罗西（艾米莉亚·琼斯 Emilia Jones 饰）出生于一个极不寻常的渔民家庭，她的父母和哥哥天生聋哑，只能通过手语交流。而健康无恙的露比既是幸运的，却也是不幸的。她担任了家人和外界交流沟通的桥梁，为此承受了诸多的歧视和嘲笑。这期间，只有好闺蜜戈蒂（艾米·福赛思 Amy Forsyth 饰）是她最坚定的支撑。因为喜欢男孩迈尔斯（福迪亚·瓦尔什-匹罗 Ferdia Walsh-Peelo 饰），露比报名参加校合唱团，而天资颖悟的很快得到了负责老师的赏识。在此之后，露比频繁奔波于合唱团和家族之间，她渴望前往伯克利追求音乐梦想，而这势必要和对她无比依赖的原生家庭分隔两地。露比为此深深焦虑……本片根据真实事件改编。

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

　　改编自彼得·克罗伊德小说《丹·雷诺和莱姆豪斯的杀人魔》。讲述1880年伦敦的莱姆豪斯区发生谋杀案，人们认为这是古老生物石巨人所为，但真相另有隐情。