Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch on 'Eight Mountains'

Table Of Content

• ‘The Eight Mountains’ Review: A Bond Forged Amid Splendor
• Dan Schneider Sues ‘Quiet on Set’ Producers for Defamation, Calls Nickelodeon Abuse Docuseries a ‘Hit Job’
• Laura Casey Interiors
• ‘The Eight Mountains’ Review: A Stirring, Sprawling, Epic and Intimate Tale of Friends in High Places
• Review: The Broken Circle Breakdown

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Van Groeningen noted that Marinelli and Borghi played friends before in Claudio Caligari’s gritty “Non essere cattivo” (“Don’t Be Bad”) which went to Venice in 2015. It was a time to sit back and reassess your way of living; our way as human beings on the planet to find new respect for the earth. The directors wrote the script during lockdown and both say it was “really nice” to be in the Alps and in Nepal, which are the film’s two main locations, at that particular time. This “trip that we made in our fantasy to these corners of the world during lockdown” seeped into the film, Vandermeersch noted.

‘The Eight Mountains’ Review: A Bond Forged Amid Splendor

So it’s a relief to report that Tóth, co-adapting with Klára Muhi a novel by Zsuzsa F. Várkonyi, handles this intermittent tension — both what’s interior and unarticulated, and what’s externally threatening — with an appreciative subtlety, and without a hint of soapiness. Tóth nods cautiously toward a dignified ambiguity, what can exist in the molecules between vulnerable souls in the process of rebuilding. Aldó, played by Károly Hajduk, is a wiry, disheveled figure with benevolent eyes and a haunted air, whose entire life is his ob-gyn practice since losing his family in the camps. When he meets angrily self-possessed 16-year-old patient Klára (Abigél Szőke), she’s coming out of a delayed puberty, still writing letters to parents whose absence she can explain away, and railing against life under her discipline-intensive, exasperated great-aunt Olgi (Mari Nagy). There’s an easy, flinty chemistry between Marinelli and Borghi, which is especially interesting given each is somewhat counterintuitively cast in a role for which the other might seem a more obvious choice.

Dan Schneider Sues ‘Quiet on Set’ Producers for Defamation, Calls Nickelodeon Abuse Docuseries a ‘Hit Job’

As rescuers had broken into the house by making a hole in the roof, Pietro reasons that the house will therefore not last either because in some lives, there are mountains to which one cannot return, including the one at the center of it all. As he plays soccer with children at Asmi's school, he realizes that all that remains is to wander the eight mountains because on the highest mountain, he lost a friend. Returning to Grana, he informs Bruno of his plans to settle down in Nepal and probably will not be returning to Grana yearly; Bruno invites him to dinner.

Laura Casey Interiors

This Scottish-born lass has been worldwide from the UK, Japan, and South Africa, officially making her home within the US. Founding her business in 2005, it’s clear to see that she loves what she does. While she mainly focuses on residential clients, Starr also has experience designing for Fortune 500 companies. Her work has shown up in various US-based magazines such as New American Luxury and the Lake Norman Woman.

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It’s Me, Margaret” and “Tótem” A young girl’s coming-of-age and her family’s joy and heartache are perfectly observed in both Kelly Fremon Craig’s underappreciated Judy Blume adaptation and Lila Avilés’ haunting work of poetic realism. “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” and “Earth Mama” A highly intelligent way with the camera and a deep, intuitive understanding of Black motherhood and childhood distinguished both of these sterling debut features. “About Dry Grasses” and “Godland”Two of the year’s most visually and intellectually immersive films, each pitting one very small man against a vast, sprawling landscape. “The Eight Mountains” is directed by Oscar-nominated Felix van Groeningen (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”) and Charlotte Vandermeesch. The cast includes Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Lupo Barbiero, Cristiano Sassella, and Elisabetta Mazzullo. The Eight Mountains screened at the Cannes film festival, and is released on 12 May in UK cinemas.

Here, you’ll get a glimpse into the homes of their clients, along with the designers’ thoughts on how each room was inspired and came together. From traditional Southern looks to contemporary designs—and a lot in between—take a look at these gorgeous rooms located in Charlotte and nearby. Hailing from Palm Beach, Florida, Charlotte Munder is the principal and founder of Charlotte Munder Design.

The Eight Mountains review – a gentle, accomplished epic - Little White Lies

The Eight Mountains review – a gentle, accomplished epic.

Posted: Tue, 09 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The spiritual dimension of Pietro and Bruno’s bond has its appeal, and one of the movie’s pleasures is that it takes male friendship seriously. There’s an expressly erotic dimension to the men’s love for each other, as can be the case with intimate relationships, though not an explicitly carnal one. They love and sustain each other, and it seems telling that neither forms a long-term romantic relationship until they’re adults. Perhaps, during one of the long summer evenings they spend together after Pietro returns to the area, one quietly reaches for the other under the cover of night. The filmmakers don’t say and neither does the novel, which each suggests that material concerns aren’t finally what troubles these two characters. Pietro, the restless, openhearted city boy who narrates “The Eight Mountains,” a tender story about love and friendship, is 11 years old when the movie begins.

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'The Eight Mountains' Review: Felix Van Groenigen's Cannes Mountain Movie - IndieWire

'The Eight Mountains' Review: Felix Van Groenigen's Cannes Mountain Movie.

Posted: Sat, 21 May 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Indeed, the physical resemblance of the younger actors to their adult opposites suggests the casting may have been the other way round at some point. If so, the change is inspired, given the wonderful subtlety Marinelli brings to the role of Pietro, so different from his eye-catching turn in “Martin Eden.” Here, he’s the soulful, uncertain, meandering yin to Borghi’s compact, practical yang. Their moments of connection are moving in their understatement, as when adult Bruno calls adult Pietro by his childhood nickname for the first time, across the roof slates of the hut they’re building in quixotic remembrance of the latter’s father.

In the Grana dialect, Bruno says, the phrase “it seems long” communicates a feeling of sadness. “The Eight Mountains,” at nearly two-and-a-half hours, is long and it is often sad. But it is also joyful and grateful and wise, with an emotional heft that mounds in the middle, after the jagged incline of Bruno and Pietro’s youth, peaking at their reunion and then, with many a backward glance, embarking at a more languid, thoughtful pace on the long journey home. Stately and serene from a distance, but up close riven with the fissures and follies of a friendship that costs both men so much but gives them even more, the movie, too, is a mountain. But the symmetries that Van Groeningen — director of the eviscerating “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” here co-directing with partner and collaborator Vandermeersch — find in this decades-long sprawl are gentle and unforced.

Pietro’s father’s death reunites the two in realizing his dream of constructing a cabin on the Alps, and the project and subsequent explorations of the awe-inspiring mountain range bond Pietro and Bruno in a shared purpose. Yet despite their connection, the purity of nature and the demands of society both threaten to drive the men to pursue different, possibly irrevocably divergent paths on the vertiginous terrain of life. The mountains in "The Eight Mountains" are the Italian Alps and the Himalayas, equally beautiful, equally intimidating, and dazzling. They are seen with the eyes of two men who know them very well, feel comfortable climbing up and down the steep slopes, and have absorbed mountain life's challenges and joys. Directed by Belgian filmmakers Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, "The Eight Mountains" works slowly and patiently. This may be frustrating for some viewers, but the film works because of its slowness and patience, not despite it.

Like Robin Williams in the Woody Allen film, blurred outside of the cameras even when he goes home, I feel a flush of existential humiliation creeping up. I spoke with Van Groeningen and Vandermeersch shortly before The Eight Mountains opened theatrically in the United States. Our conversation covered where they divided duties on the set of the film, how they translated Coginetti’s novel into cinematic terms, their approach to music, and what the film means for them both personally and professionally. Traci Zeller shares with us a glimpse into her favorite room design, along with how this classic chic “garden room” was inspired and came together.