• PROGRAMME
• SYNOPSES

Arizona Dream

1. Author: David Atkins
2. Director: Emir Kusturica
3. Music: Goran Bregovic
4. Starring:
   Johnny Depp,
   Faye Dunaway,
   Vincent Gallo,
   Lili Taylor,
   Jerry Lewis,
   Paulina Porizkova
5. Production: USA/France
6. USA
7. 120 min.
8. 1992

The author himself described this movie as “the tale of a man who ventures into the hell of two women’s tragic lives”. But the style of the film – true to the work of the Bosnian director – is about as far from realistic and narrative as it gets. Shot in the USA in 1993, mauled in the cutting room, renamed (originally it was The Arrowtooth Waltz), plagued throughout the shooting by conflicts between the director and the American co-producer that delayed release of the film for five years, Arizona Dream is a hybrid product, very weird, very original, that moves about in a sort of dream-state. Each character pursues a dream, with special emphasis on flying. For Elaine (Faye Dunaway), the intriguing widow who beguiles Axel (Johnny Depp), it amounts to an obsession. The film is bracketed by quite fitting and bizarre images of flying fish (actually an arrowtooth flounder, hence the original title), symbol of liberty, “a magical means of travel through space and time…”