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Sunday, June 16, 2019

More (Barbet Schroeder, 1969)

Klaus Grünberg and Mimsy Farmer in More
Cast: Klaus Grünberg, Mimsy Farmer, Heinz Engelmann, Michel Chanderli, Henry Wolf, Louise Wink. Screenplay: Paul Gégauff, Barbet Schroeder, Mimsy Farmer, Eugene Archer, Paul Gardner. Cinematography: Néstor Almendros. Art direction: Néstor Almendros, Fran Lewis. Film editing: Denise de Casablanca, Rita Roland. Music: Pink Floyd.

A vivid downer film, in which a German student (Klaus Grünberg) and an American hippie (Mimsy Farmer) get more deeply involved in drugs, moving from pot to LSD to heroin. More avoids some of the clichés of films about the counterculture of the late '60s -- it doesn't try to re-create the drug experience with camera tricks but instead views its characters externally as it traces their disintegration. It places its more sordid sequences against the beauty of Ibiza to good effect, and the cinematography of Néstor Almendros makes the most of the location, but the film still feels heavy and dated.