Grape-pickers in jeans and T-shirts carry on like fraternity boys inside the austerely elegant dining hall of the Pomerol Winery. Parishioners attending Christmas mass at the Jubilee Church in Rome possess a sincerity and intensity that’s at odds with the cerebral, antiseptic design of the church interior.
     Despite their cynicism these films offer up indelible moments of beauty, and it’s these moments that linger. Cleaners on rope harnesses scale the undulating roofscape of the Bilbao museum with a dazzling kinetic energy. The immense hydraulic platform lift at the center of the Bordeaux house moves from floor to floor with tremendous majesty. These are sequence that, like the buildings themselves, are both ridiculous and refined.