CENTREPIECE: Gondola
2024 MQFF Centrepiece
Thu
21
Thu 21 Nov 7:00 PM
Selling Fast
Palace Cinema Como - Cinema 1
Wheelchair
Allocated Seating
Session proudly sponsored by Prime Video.
Screening followed by post-film celebrations in the Palace Cinema Como foyer with complimentary drinks.
MELBOURNE PREMIERE
Lesbian love language has never assumed quite such whimsically creative dimensions before as in Veit Helmer’s unutterably charming, Georgian-set Gondola – never mind that there’s nary a word spoken throughout the entire film! Iva and Nino are cable car attendants, each assigned to an orange cabin suspended high above the Caucasus Mountains, ever passing in opposite directions. Both have to fend off their ogre-like boss’s oafish overtures as they put their energies into devising ever more ingenious ways to advance their mid-air flirtations with one another. While it mightn’t contain dialogue, in any conventional, verbal sense, Gondola nonetheless represents a gloriously cinematic fusion of sound and vision, melding an Amélie-like sensibility and stunning cinematography to winsome music from Malcolm Arison and Icelandic singer-songwriter Sóley. Nino Soselia and Mathilde Irrmann are note-perfect as the two cable-car attendants; their romantic airborne antics will give you all the lift you need too!