五月櫻唇

　　In the year 2961, the time is after humanity and nature has recovered the land. A hunter named Cygnus is called to rise above his duty. He provides for Last Arc, a once nomadic band of survivors in need of food and water that is now growing scarce. The answer must be found before a group of outlandish Heretics descend upon them. Cygnus must voyage across the treacherous landscape to defend his people. Sent by Nova, the matriarch of the band, she acts based on her vision for Cygnus to find a seed of hope. The future of Last Arc is for him to discover, Cygnus ventures into a hostile landscape in search of an answer for his people. On this journey of encountering many traps and dangers, Cygnus discovers what has been hunting him is his identity.

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

　　少女艾諾拉·佩妮（Virginia Newcomb 飾）偶然在深夜進(jìn)入一家破敗的歌劇院，乖張吊詭的演員為她表演了六個異乎尋常的故事：《蟾蜍之母》一對美國夫婦來到法國某偏遠(yuǎn)山鎮(zhèn)旅行，在這里結(jié)識了一個詭異的老婆婆；《我愛你》德國柏林，走到盡頭的婚姻，歇斯底里的偏執(zhí)男人讓他的妻子再也無法忍受著無處不在的狂愛；《夢遺》飽受邪淫夢境困擾的男人，在夢與現(xiàn)實(shí)的夾縫中迷失；《事故》真實(shí)的死亡對于一個小女孩來說也許過于費(fèi)解與殘酷，然而這就是它真實(shí)的原因；《記憶收集》她殺了求死的女人們，她看見并擁有了她們的記憶；《甜食》一度沉浸在甜食和熱戀中的情侶，不知不覺走到了情感盡頭。

 在系列終章中，幸存者們將面對蒙面陌生人的新威脅。隨著秘密浮出水面，現(xiàn)實(shí)與危險的界限逐漸模糊，他們的生存之戰(zhàn)也愈發(fā)兇險。