#film-aesthetics

#film-aesthetics

Olympia, Leni Riefenstahl's four-hour 1938 documentary-a purported masterpiece on the Berlin Olympic Games-is impossible to get through in its entirety. You can't do it, not without several thumb leans on "Fast-Forward" to skip the dull parts. Her work has that in common with porn. It shares lots of the same characteristics, actually: an obsession with slick, perfect athletic bodies; monotony; repetitive floggings; manipulated states of arousal.

If there is a truth that holds firm beneath the wickedly slippery surfaces of Luca Guadagnino's movies, it's that presentation counts. No sartorial decision is made lightly, and no design element is arrived at by accident. The opening titles of his new drama, "After the Hunt," should have you on high alert. They're elegantly rendered in what looks to be Windsor Light Condensed, widely recognizable as Woody Allen's onscreen typeface of choice.