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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

A Zed and Two Noughts

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A movie every bit as peculiar as its title, from British avant-gardist Peter Greenaway. It is a gorgeous thing to look at, beautifully lit and colored and composed. (The photography is by the distinguished Sacha Vierny, of Belle de Jour, Muriel, Last Year at Marienbad, to name a few.) All the more remarkable, then, that it should sustain such a level of brain-crushing -- if never quite eye-glazing -- dullness. It has to do with a car accident caused by a low-flying Mute Swan on a road called Swann's Way, killing the wives of two zoologists who were born as Siamese twins. A woman named Bewick (a "Bewick," for you ornithological neophytes, being another type of swan, not to be confused with the American automobile of another spelling) was the driver of the car -- a Mercury, but not rented from Avis: Greenaway missed that one -- and the sole survivor of the crash, but she loses a leg, and later another leg, and somewhere between those legs (so to speak) is impregnated by one or the other or both of the grieving husbands. What exactly the movie has to do with any of this is coyly, archly, deviously unclear. As in Greenaway's Draughtsman's Contract, there is an element of mystery, but mainly as regards what the mystery is: which way was the wind blowing at the time of the accident? and how long does it take a body to decompose? and where do these deaths fit into the unfolding pattern of life on earth? and what difference do any of these things make, anyway? Symmetry, evolution, decay are recurring motifs, but there is something stagnant about them: the time-lapse decomposition of the corpse of a swan isn't terribly different from that of the corpse of a zebra or that of the corpse of a dog, etc. The braininess of the enterprise is never in doubt, indeed is at all times frighteningly evident, and some of the word-play is elegantly, if pedantically, witty. Some of the rest of it is just "In the land of the legless, the one-legged woman is queen" and "Do you think a zebra is a black animal with white stripes or a white animal with black stripes?" Make of it what you can, and the best of cryptological luck to you. With Andrea Ferreol, Brian Deacon, and Eric Deacon. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd

Rated NR

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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
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