The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

Ten years after their Institute Benjamenta, here is the second feature by The Brothers Quay, master animators turned manipulators of live actors in uncanny puppet-show environments. The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes once again places its cast in a world of minutely artificed trompe l'oeil, in which the boundary between the organic and the automatic is eerily dissolved. The story begins with a sinister, swooning overture at the opera, as singer Malvina (Amira Casar) is spirited away by her menacing admirer Dr Droz (Gottfried John). The action then shifts to Droz's remote island, where one Felisberto (Cesar Sarachu) is summoned to 'tune' the seven automata that are installed in strange mechanical tableaux around the island. The Quays' initial inspiration was Argentinian fabulist Adolfo Bioy Casares, but other echoes abound: Raymond Roussel, Jules Verne, Portuguese baroque art, and the paintings of Böcklin and Magritte. The Quays are unrivalled for their silversmith-like fastidiousness in creating strange hermetic dream worlds, and their latest film resembles little else in cinema - although it does share some of its score with Chris Marker's classic La Jetée. Abandon all preconceptions and surrender to the strange fantasmal drift of a darkly magical world.