But seeing them could convince you that summer really is a season of fullness. Perhaps a semidocumentary about the nomadic Ghashghai goatherds and carpetmakers of southeastern Iran is not your idea of a fun night at the 'plex. Yet Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh is a visual wonder, folkloric and folk-lyrical. Gabbeh means carpet, and the young woman is a kind of textile goddess weaving a spell over the proceedings. She must watch the painful birth of a calf, the playful bickering of an old couple, and the death of a little girl who has chased after lost sheep, as a backdrop to her own desperate longings.
Color is almost a religion here.
The notion that a film's look and tone can be its subject is, well, foreign to Hollywood directors, for whom the basic elements are a propulsive story and some slambang special effects. But as Chen Kaige shows in the humid, tumid Temptress Moon, image is all. My Concubine, Chen paints a glamorous portrait of drugs and decadence in 1920s China. He blows the sweet smoke in her face, which creases into a sickly smile. Opium is the curse of the House of Pang.