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Out of Love
R1 - America - Omnibus Entertainment / Film Movement Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (16th June 2019). |
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The Film
 "I worry that we might be a bad match," says Greek parttime caregiver/singer Varya (Cobain's Naomi Velissariou) to Russia restaurant chef Nikolai (Eastern Boys' Daniil Vorobyov) - both foreigners in the Netherlands seeking to immerse themselves in its culture through their artistic interests - as they try desperately to turn lust at first sight into a lasting relationship. Nightly bouts of sex and late gourmet dinners are addictive at first, but Varya finds herself coming down and gettin irritable when real life interjects in the form of her job and latest client Celine (singer Koosje Bulens) who has much wisdom to impart about a long life lived. Nikolai's satisfaction with the cloistered world they have built together within her apartment masks a similar disinterest in her life that she shows quite blatantly when out with his friends. However much each tries to adapt their personalities to one another with white lies, what seems like little differences of opinion to one prove hurtful to the other. Varya wields her pseudo-Bohemianism like a weapon against Nikolai's one area of refinement in his developed palate and the cultural knowledge of food that seems equally pretentious to her. Varya seems childish to Nikolai for not being able to meet her unspoken emotional needs, and his seething attempts to remain calm only make her angrier until he too explodes in rages. Yet another arty take on the amour fou, Out of Love feels too episodic in spite of the good work of Velissariou and Vorobyov with their fluency in the English language possibly leading to further misunderstandings of unintentional inflection, but the direction of actress-turned-director Paloma Aguilera Valdebenito in her second feature seems as much lacking discipline as trying to be fashionably shapeless in its construction.
Video
Omnibus' progressive, anamorphic widescreen presentation of this HD-lensed film gets the job done without any egregious compression errors.
Audio
No issues with the Dolby Digital stereo mix which is dialogue-heavy and it sound design predominantly on-set audio. Burnt-in English subtitles are included for French and Dutch dialogue but some closed captions might have been nice for the accented English dialogue, particularly when the characters mumble or mutter. 
Extras
There are no extras apart from start-up trailers.
Overall
Yet another arty take on the amour fou, Out of Love feels too episodic in spite of the good work of Velissariou and Vorobyov with their fluency in the English language possibly leading to further misunderstandings of unintentional inflection, but the direction seems as much lacking discipline as trying to be fashionably shapeless in its construction. 
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