Pretty to look at, _Behind the Sun_ is nonetheless typical of the painfully conservative international films Miramax increasingly chooses to bring to U.S. audiences. Its symbolism is obvious and heavy-handed, its dialogue melodramatic, and its performances insultingly broad. It conforms perfectly to the feel-good foreign fluff that has flooded the market at least since _Cinema Paradisio_; that is, it embodies to a "t" the safe, lowest-common-denominator American conception of what a foreign film "should" be. As a result of Miramax's market dominance, more dynamic international films that seek to surprise us or advance film language in some way get marginalized, going largely unseen in the U.S.
Review of Behind the Sun
