Does anyone still harbor the notion that Milan Kundera's erotic, philosophical 1984 novel was unfilmable? For starters, as San Francisco-based director Philip Kaufman rightly observed, "What could be more visual than Juliette Binoche's face?" And of course there was editor Walter Murch's brilliantly cinematic assemblage of real footage from the military halt to Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring, decribed by Kaufman as a "variant of what we had here in San Francisco called the Summer of Love...[though] the Russians really didn't see it that way." A film about lovemaking as subversion of totalitarian oppression, this 1988 treasure, gorgeously photographed by the peerless Sven Nykvist, shows Kaufman in top form and working with top talent—particularly Binoche, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Lena Olin. This special release on two discs (to maximize resolution) includes an affable new making-of featurette, but any reissue is reason enough to watch the film again. A+