7:00 p.m.	The Unbearable Lightness of Being Philip Kaufman (U.S., 1988)

Vivien Hillgrove is a picture and sound editor. She has worked on Henry and June, Blue Velvet, The Right Stuff, Backdraft, and many films produced by Saul Zaentz.

Adapted from Milan Kundera’s novel, this grand romance begins its vaporous plot during the Prague Spring of 1968, an optimistic moment when socialism had a gentler hand. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Tomas, a philandering surgeon who favors “lightness,” a disconnection from the weight of history. His sexual appetite is an aspect of this flight from onerous commitment, and rarely does he repeat himself, frolicking instead from woman to woman with the seductive command “Take off your clothes.” This ends when he meets two women of weighty will: Sabina (Lena Olin), whose own appetite is ravenous; and Tereza (Juliette Binoche), an innocent from the country with a more provincial palate. Then the Soviet tanks arrive and lightness becomes a luxury. With the handsome trio of thespians at the center of the film, cinematography by the great Sven Nykvist, a script by Buñuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carrière, and cutting by master editor Walter Murch, The Unbearable Lightness of Being finds just the right balance between weighty aesthetics and the desires of the soul.

• Written by Kaufman, Jean-Claude Carrière, based on the novel by Milan Kundera. Photographed by Sven Nykvist. With Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Derek de Lint. (171 mins, Color, 35mm, PFA Collection, permission The Saul Zaentz Company)