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‘After Dreaming’ Review: A Hypnotic Portrait of an Armenian Existence Defined by War
Christine Haroutounian wields a disembodied lens in 'After Dreaming,' her enticing feature debut.
It is, quite fittingly, a work of temporal displacement, buoyed by occasionally surreal imagery, and repetitive, poetic dialogue that plays like a stuck record — like history repeating itself while skipping beats. This is largely owed to its dizzying use of focus, with parts of the frame blurred laterally, à la the works of Julian Schnabel, rather than across three dimensions, resulting in a painterly visual tilt-shift. Haroutounian and cinematographer Evgeny Rodin achieve this liminal approach to character by separating the lens from the camera, all but embodying the sense of dissociation underlying the movie’s drama.
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