Movielogr
Queen of Diamonds (1991)
Directed by Nina Menkes
Twitter Facebook Google+Overview
Firdaus is a Blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas landscape juxtaposed between glittering casino lights and the deteriorating desert oasis. Negotiating a missing husband and neighboring domestic violence, Firdaus’ world unfolds as a fragmented interplay between repetition and repressed anger.
Length 77 minutes
Actors
Tinka Menkes | Emmellda Beech | Jeff Douglas | Emmellda F. Beech | Kathryn Francomacaro | Jeffrey Eget | Daniel Villarreal | Perfecto Mangual | Stanley Kolacz | Carolyn Yager | Evelyn A. Goss | Harry Kokurin | Shannon Alexander | Holly Erickson | Andrew Schnierow | Gerardo Gaxiola | Ken Oustad | Rich Andrews | Ed Forbis | Yvonne Chevalier
Viewing History (seen 2 times)
| Date Viewed | Device | Format | Source | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08/20/2024 | TV | Streaming | Video on Demand | 6.5 stars |
| 10/09/2019 | Movie Screen | Film | Theater | 6 stars |
| (Average) 6.25 stars |
Viewing Notes
This is the type of movie that keeps me coming back to Chicago Film Society. Literally a movie about nothing yet we get elephants dancing, a desert lake wedding w/an Elvis impersonator, and extending scenes of people playing blackjack. Like a really long scene of the same ppl playing blackjack. Such an odd film yet captivating nonetheless b/c you keep wondering where it’s going and what she, the director, is trying to say.
The description on CFS webpage is perfect:
“While the Sundance brand is most closely associated with churning out Academy Award also-rans these days, Nina Menkes’s Queen of Diamonds, which premiered at the film festival in 1991, is a reminder that the American independent cinema can be a lot of things outside of “quirky,” namely “challenging” and “intensely personal.” Made for the craft services budget of a film like Little Miss Sunshine, Menkes’s first 35mm film and breakout feature found the director drawing on the work of Chantal Akerman to explore the rhythms of the life of a woman at work. Following the daily grind of Las Vegas blackjack dealer Firdaus, Menkes observes as Firdaus’s life reaches a zenith of surreal, despairing nonchalance in the desolation of a Nevada desert dotted with cheaply furnished, linoleum-lined apartments, burned-out mobile homes, and dried-up lakes. Shot in a series of long takes with little of the connective ligature commercial cinema typically relies on, Queen of Diamonds piles on plot detours and unresolved mysteries with each new scene, wallowing in all the gaudy allure and sunburnt drudgery of life in the margins of Sin City.”
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