A grand, mesmerizing epic, Albert Serra’s most ambitious film yet unfurls with novelistic verve. Pacifiction is an elliptical political and colonial thriller that is both a departure from and a deepening of the Catalan filmmaker’s singular form of cinema. Shot in French Polynesia in a panoramic widescreen burnished with lush and languid island landscapes, the film’s aesthetic sublime is one that remains infused with a sense of paranoia and dread as its narrative is consistently thwarted in favour of modulated moods and atmospheres.
