Shane Carruth is one of those watch-the-name directors and his second film, Upstream Colour, is one of the releases of the late summer. It's a great big magical mystery tour of a film, grand in scope, if not scale, and full of big ideas that will take weeks - no, months - to digest. The movie has a new poster to soothe your troubled brow this drizzly morning. Click on the image below for a closer look.
His first, Primer, made for $7000 and a bag of chips, was a pre-Looper mind-bender that saw a group of pals master the art of time travel in their garage, creating doppelgangers of themselves and exploding a fair few viewers' brains in the process.
The synopsis for this one reads: “A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.”
Can we elaborate on that? Yes and no. Key players are a couple (Carruth and Amy Seimetz), a thief, a farmer, some pigs and a strange, hypnotic link between them - all of which makes it sound more like the raw materials for a nursery rhyme than a kinda-sci-fi meta-romance that stretch the synapses.
Carruth picks up where he left off in Primer. No-one gets a pass with this film - if you're looking for pure escapism you're probably in the wrong place - and it's typically light on dialogue, but make no mistake, it's a wholly original slant on love and relationships that richly rewards an open mind.
Look out for a fascinating insight into Carruth's approach to filmmaking in the Empire **podcast later this month. You can catch Upstream Colour in cinemas from August 30. Watch the trailer here.