dot the i

Director: Matthew Parkhill
Screenwriters: Matthew Parkhill

Institute History

  • 2003 Sundance Film Festival

Description

It has dawned on most of us that maybe, just maybe, our experience of life is actually a dream—our own or, even more terrifying, someone else's. This view is reflected in the Hindu concept, Maya, that says everything we think real may only be an illusion. At its core, dot the i, the elegant, dark debut of writer/director Matthew Parkhill, cleverly applies these unsettling notions to an ominous story about a love triangle in our contemporary, media-obsessed society.

Fiery flamenco dancer Carmen is engaged to wealthy, kind, but dull Barnaby, who wants only to spoil her and protect her from her violent past in Spain. On the night of her bachelorette party, she encounters Kit, a sweet but reserved Brazilian actor who awakens in her a mysterious passion. The deceitful betrayal that ensues, involving cloaked identities and sophisticated electronic equipment, tests all three characters' gullibility and corruptibility.

Borrowing as much from sex farce and psychological thrillers as from poststructural theory, dot the i, with its cheeky, eclectic score and rhythmic editing, is as entertaining and sexy as it is smart. The relationship between Kit (the striking Gael Garcia Bernal) and Carmen (the ravishing Natalia Verbeke), told from multiple perspectives and mining popular film for references, ultimately exposes the slipperiness of the real and the artificial, of truth and performance.

— Caroline Libresco

Screening Details

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