The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes review

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A decade on from their debut feature Institute Benjamenta, the Quay Brothers return with this oddity - a fantastical mixture of stop-motion animation, live action and trompe l'oeil effects.

The titular piano-tuner Felisberto (César Saracho) has been called to a remote villa to test the mechanical automata created by Dr Droz (Gottfried John). It's there that he encounters amnesiac Malvina (Amira Casar) - and Felisberto is the spitting image of her lost lover...

There's no denying the fertile visual imagination that has conjured up such a singular cinematic universe, yet the film's weaknesses - impenetrable dialogue, incoherent storytelling, indifferent performances - are hard to ignore. Even the lush, romantic music is borrowed from Chris Marker's time-travel classic La Jetée.

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