1971-1980DramaEduardo de GregorioFrance

Eduardo de Gregorio – Sérail AKA Surreal Estate (1976)

Synopsis:
An English novelist is lured, with disconcerting and disorienting results, into purchasing a crumbling mansion by what he imagines are the deliberately ‘literary’ ploys of its housekeeper (Leslie Caron) and two mysterious, lurking women.

Review:
As a scriptwriter (mainly for Rivette and Bertolucci), de Gregorio repeatedly subverted narrative expectations, and here – his first feature as writer/director – he indulges in the perilous but pleasing game of developing the characters played by Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier in the film-within-the-film of Rivette’s Céline and Julie. An English novelist (Corin Redgrave) is lured, with disconcerting and disorienting results, into purchasing a crumbling mansion by what he imagines are the deliberately ‘literary’ ploys of its housekeeper (Leslie Caron) and two mysterious, lurking women. Richly photographed, what starts as a slightly self-conscious exercise develops, after many deceptive twists, into an intriguing and gratifying sensual entertainment.

— TimeOut.

1.36GB | 1h 26mn | 1018×476 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/FF28C505900037E/Surreal_Estate_(1976)_–_Eduardo_de_Gregorio.mkv

Language:French, English
Subtitles:English (muxed), French (hardcoded for the English parts)

2 Comments

  1. The film can be viewed on YouTube for free. Anyone who enjoys the offbeat and/or Henry James-based adaptations will likely appreciate the richness of this film.

  2. Thanks for unearthing this: an obscure and pretty rare title that I’d heard of but never seen. Had not even seen any mention of it in several decades. Foreign titles like this very seldom turn up anywhere. (Good luck finding them on Netflix these days, which keeps shrinking its offerings down to *contemporary* lowest-common-denominator junk, or even on Amazon Prime Video !) Kudos for continuing to do what hardly any other sites I’m aware of are doing.

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