Passports: Friday 28. Babel Room 4. 18h.
With the projection of the tape bring The presentation of the programming of the Official Section for the competition of the 37th edition of the Mostra de Valencia closed. Directed by French director Damien Manivel, The film takes us to a time after the death of Jesus Christ.. Years after this event, María Magdalena, already an old woman, She lives retired in a leafy forest where she spends her last days waiting for the arrival of death.. Between mystical visions or dreams of your past, He wanders from one place to another while crying out pitifully for the loss of his love.
Con bring, The Mostra made its contribution to the dissemination of those other languages that tend to be left out of the traditional programming of exhibition halls and televisions. rare cinema, to understand us. There is no plot in this proposal to hold on to.. Instead, What we are going to witness is a series of events linked more by poetic or metaphorical continuity than by plot.. Inspired by references from apocryphal texts in the Bible, bring bets on the figure of Mary Magdalene as lover of Jesus. In the monastic silence that his retirement imposes on him, sorrow for the absence of your loved one. around her, a cold and hostile forest surrounds her with a blanket of fog. Little more needs to be explained.
Damien Manivel's bet is focused, on the one hand, in the impression of sensations. Manivel seeks to introduce us to physical space, psychological and mystical in which the protagonist finds herself. To strengthen that physical plane of your speech, is supported, above all, in the presence of its main actress, Elsa Wolliaston. The expression and composition of your face, grooves in the skin, the look, They are in themselves sufficiently eloquent and discursive elements and, definitely, one of the director's greatest motivations, who sticks his camera to that face in order not to lose a single detail. Added to this is the cadence of the steps and the elegance of the actress's movements., not by chance, dancer by profession (like the director himself), that exude a magnetism that could not have been achieved any other way. In this same sense, the forest also takes center stage. The knots in the trunks of the trees or the crystalline clarity of the water of a stream will subside., So, to the viewer's own archive of sensations.
The psychological plane will be marked by the use of cinematographic time. Manivel's plans are long, rested, fluffy. That tempo gives the film a heaviness or gravity that immerses us in the image., forcing us to look, leaving us in suspense, in expectation, trapped in an unpredictable flow, abstract, between the four margins of the image. The use of sound will be the only mark of the rhythm of the sequences. Wolliaston's breathing establishes the cadence of that internal passage, almost hypnotic, from the movie. Finally, the mystical plane will be established by the use of certain symbolisms. At a time in history, a young Jesus Christ appears on the screen. Next to him lies a young woman in a forest spot. They are both naked and María watches them from a distance.. The use of this type of images creates doubt in the viewer. Is it a memory? a vision? Or both?
It is not easy to establish what Damien Manivel wants to tell us with this film. The enigmatic thing about the images, its most enigmatic ending, does not pave the way for us. old age, the passage of time, the pain of lost love, our connection with nature and the divine, These are some issues that are noted here. Suggestions, notes that lead us to new images or questions. That would be the idea. G.LEON
