Last Screening

If our favorite Cleveland Cinematheque director went “Psycho”, things might end badly like they do in LAST SCREENING. Mild-mannered Sylvain is the manager and projectionist of a small-town cinema that has lost its funding. He's in severe denial, placidly greeting his dwindling group of regulars at daily screenings of “French Cancan.” But after the last credits roll, he closes up the house and descends into his apartment in the bowels of the theater, where he has erected macabre homages to the screen goddesses he worships. Sylvain's tentative friendship with aspiring actress Manon doesn't extend to other women he encounters, who would have been better off not running into him in the dark. It seems Sylvain had a nasty Maman who made him memorize film lines and beat him when he slipped up. Like mother, like son: we all know rabid cinephiles who look normal but conceal dark secrets. An outrageously demented, grisly black comedy and a lament for the demise of the arthouse theater. (In French with subtitles) – B.B.