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Tuvalu (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 26
Fresh: 19
Rotten:7
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Consensus: Though a challenging watch, Tuvalu is visually striking and intriguingly quirky.
Theatrical Release:May 4, 2001 Limited
Box Office: $135,270
Synopsis: A small town indoor pool and the limitless mind of one of the pool employees make the setting for this stunning comedic fantasy. The pool is where local residents go to escape the daily grind and... A small town indoor pool and the limitless mind of one of the pool employees make the setting for this stunning comedic fantasy. The pool is where local residents go to escape the daily grind and enter a fantastical dream world. Adrift in these daydreams, the Anton (Denis Lavant) finds Eva (Chulpan Hamatova), a beautiful woman who has the power to take this working class visionary into a strange, surreal world to live together in love. With roots in the circus and with an incredibly imaginary point of view, TUVALU will gain German director Veit Helmer many comparisons to filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Chuck Jones, Buster Keaton, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. This should not distract viewers from its highly original look and breathtaking scope. Filmed in both black and white and color with nearly no dialogue, Helmer's engaging love story is the director's feature debut after several successful shorts. The acrobatic and expressive Denis Lavant is a perfect daydreaming lead for this 2001 fable. [More]
Starring: Denis Lavant, E.J. Callahan
Starring: Denis Lavant, E.J. Callahan
Director: Veit Helmer
Director: Veit Helmer
Screenwriter: Veit Helmer, Michaela Beck
Studio: Indican Pictures
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Reviews for Tuvalu
Tuvalu is like watching a Dali painting brought to life...and who wouldn't want to see that?
Ultimately a rewarding -- if weird -- experience. It's just too bad that it takes so long to get there.
Fetishistic in its bemusement with gadgetry and painstaking in its slapstick-meets-high-emotion construction... Tuvalu is a decently engaging high farce, even if its influences are roundly on display.
A fascinating work that never quite coalesces, Tuvalu finally becomes oppressively repetitive.
The film is relentlessly arty and much too stylistically bizarre for mainstream taste ... But it has its own peculiar charm.
Tuvalu is astounding. It is also bizarre, challenging, and, at times, admirably overreaching.
Emil Christov's stunningly clear black and white cinematography presents images from another time, like a neo-Guy Maddin flick.
They used to be called moving pictures, and the captivating Tuvalu reminds us why.
Recommended for its singular vision -- a concept executed with bravura style, intelligent curiosity, and playful wit.
Helmer's film is easy to enjoy as a mere romp, though it also can be read as a very thinly veiled allegory about post-Soviet Europe.
A gorgeous cough syrup hallucination -– the kind of beautiful, feverish dream to which you succumb while eardrum-piercingly high on over-the-counter cold medicine.
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