Labyrinth Under Cyclone

Cast adrift in the universe after the world’s end, a man and a woman find passing refuge in each other and their art. Fusing photorealism and painterly animation, Labyrinth Under Cyclone presents an abstract, dreamlike elegy to romance, a last dance with death.

He is a painter; She is a musician.They meet, fall in love and separate aboard what might be a spaceship floating through the cosmos after a world-ending apocalypse. Are they primordial beings at the origin of life? Or the last of their kind enacting an indestructible romantic myth for one final time? 

Nothing is certain while talking about Thai artist Achitaphon Piansukprasert’s Labyrinth Under Cyclone, a melancholy, non-narrative tone poem set in no particular time or place. Adopting a stream-of-consciousness approach, the film works up a dreamy, achingly intimate atmosphere in which a man and a woman find fleeting solace in each other before an inevitable heartbreak.  

With its grimy, low-res imagery, Piansukprasert’s film employs a poetics of obscurity that stands out in an era of ever sharper images. The visual field sways between figuration and abstraction, as actors and objects turn into amorphous forms in constant flux. Echoing a long avant-garde tradition from Goya to Gidal, Labyrinth Under Cyclone invites viewers into a hypnotic, undeniably personal artistic space. 

– Srikanth Srinivasan

Trailer

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