Folks, there is a spoiler alert on this comment and I urge you to take it seriously. You must see this, then come back.
The comment below talks about structure, as my comments usually do. The structure should not be apparent to you before you see it though, because the way you discover this and its mysteries, mirrors the way the two people here discover each other and themselves.
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Medem is to my mind one of the three greatest living filmmakers. I do not expect everything he does to change my life, but I know he will never fail to enrich in some way. He is all about narrative structure and adventures in folding beyond the norm. He also — so far — has found it useful to place women as the fulcrum of his films. In this he is gentle and insightful. In his structural experiments in prior films he has sometimes been deft but the folding is obvious and does not support the emotional delivery that it should.
All of those experiments pay off here. This is film packed with cinematic and narrative devices, and every one works with the others. Every one contributes to a great upswelling of emotional engagement. And folks, the engagement is full of tension, ambiguity, fear. This is love as it is in our souls and not as it is in date movies. Complex unknowns, urges and liquid needs.
The actual plot is the thinnest skeleton, and I understand it is borrowed from another film, the way Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot skeletons. Two women — strangers — meet, fall in love and separate in the course of ten hours or so. Commentors will likely focus on the sensuality of some parts of it and the nudity in most.
But the real effect is a sensitive discovery of the nature of urge captured by another soul. This has two explorers who see each other fully, the basis of love; Medem raises the experience of their sight into each other to the level of our sight of them. Early we are told that this room in which the entire film occurs is on the site of the ancient Roman theater. The characters pause as they feel the eyes of the audience upon them. This is conveyed by the device of a map. Thereafter, the women in the room have their own theater as they look out on the world.
Microsoft's version of Googlemaps (suitably plugged) provides the maps for how they use the world as the matrix for their discovery. This is a fundamental symmetry. The two see each other while we do. They see into the world as we the world look into that tiny hotel room. Within the room are paintings that themselves are narrative maps and the camera lingers on one and another as great semiotic maps.
This map idea is conveyed in the first shot as we have (what is traditionally called) a long tracking shot as we sit in the room "Rear Window"-wise, walk through the credits, see our characters on the street, watch a seduction and then have them appear in the room while we canvas the paintings and nooks therein. It is not an ostentatious shot like Welles, dePalma, Anderson and such have done. It is gentle, almost invisible, a river carrying us into the story, the room.
Two paintings in the room matter in the way that Raoul Ruiz often uses. One is about learning of love and passion and the other about experiencing it. Between on the ceiling is a cupid who literally takes over the reality as the symmetries are knotted. This bit of what is called magical realism is triggered early on when there is a point in which one women leaves, the other falls asleep, the camera floats to this cupid and the rest could be a dream — or not.
The film ends with an act that alters the map in which they sit — setting a flag — visible to the world from a satellite-cupid. While making love, one woman discovers the topography of the other, calling it so, by gentle caresses.
These women are strangers, each with an internal symmetry. Each reveals themselves by telling a story about themselves that has another woman in it. In each case, the stories are inverted: where the teller is actually the other character in the story: a daughter instead of a mother; one twin sister instead of another. In both cases, the one inverted out is an actress.
We have similar mirrors throughout the film in terms of cinematic effect. One central and powerful scene literally involves mirrors, with each woman talking to the reflection of the other. Mirrors and architectural and cinematic symmetries feature in almost every shot that is not a closeup. Narrative symmetries occur, for instance we learn that one woman is a mechanical engineer focusing on human transit. She has invented a bike shaped in the form of a woman's back. The rider enters the woman's body. She admires the other's legs, the legs of an athlete and thinks of her future with this woman as a matter of running on her legs.
The ambiguous ending revolves on this running.
The score alternates between tango-of-souls music when in the dance, and ballads when watching it. Similarly, Medem is unafraid of having nooks and corners dark.
All of this structure is invisible, underpinning a deep engagement in love, seeing-knowing, and being. I urge you to see this. It is not just tears and blood you see. You bleed. You cry.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
The comment below talks about structure, as my comments usually do. The structure should not be apparent to you before you see it though, because the way you discover this and its mysteries, mirrors the way the two people here discover each other and themselves.
+++
Medem is to my mind one of the three greatest living filmmakers. I do not expect everything he does to change my life, but I know he will never fail to enrich in some way. He is all about narrative structure and adventures in folding beyond the norm. He also — so far — has found it useful to place women as the fulcrum of his films. In this he is gentle and insightful. In his structural experiments in prior films he has sometimes been deft but the folding is obvious and does not support the emotional delivery that it should.
All of those experiments pay off here. This is film packed with cinematic and narrative devices, and every one works with the others. Every one contributes to a great upswelling of emotional engagement. And folks, the engagement is full of tension, ambiguity, fear. This is love as it is in our souls and not as it is in date movies. Complex unknowns, urges and liquid needs.
The actual plot is the thinnest skeleton, and I understand it is borrowed from another film, the way Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot skeletons. Two women — strangers — meet, fall in love and separate in the course of ten hours or so. Commentors will likely focus on the sensuality of some parts of it and the nudity in most.
But the real effect is a sensitive discovery of the nature of urge captured by another soul. This has two explorers who see each other fully, the basis of love; Medem raises the experience of their sight into each other to the level of our sight of them. Early we are told that this room in which the entire film occurs is on the site of the ancient Roman theater. The characters pause as they feel the eyes of the audience upon them. This is conveyed by the device of a map. Thereafter, the women in the room have their own theater as they look out on the world.
Microsoft's version of Googlemaps (suitably plugged) provides the maps for how they use the world as the matrix for their discovery. This is a fundamental symmetry. The two see each other while we do. They see into the world as we the world look into that tiny hotel room. Within the room are paintings that themselves are narrative maps and the camera lingers on one and another as great semiotic maps.
This map idea is conveyed in the first shot as we have (what is traditionally called) a long tracking shot as we sit in the room "Rear Window"-wise, walk through the credits, see our characters on the street, watch a seduction and then have them appear in the room while we canvas the paintings and nooks therein. It is not an ostentatious shot like Welles, dePalma, Anderson and such have done. It is gentle, almost invisible, a river carrying us into the story, the room.
Two paintings in the room matter in the way that Raoul Ruiz often uses. One is about learning of love and passion and the other about experiencing it. Between on the ceiling is a cupid who literally takes over the reality as the symmetries are knotted. This bit of what is called magical realism is triggered early on when there is a point in which one women leaves, the other falls asleep, the camera floats to this cupid and the rest could be a dream — or not.
The film ends with an act that alters the map in which they sit — setting a flag — visible to the world from a satellite-cupid. While making love, one woman discovers the topography of the other, calling it so, by gentle caresses.
These women are strangers, each with an internal symmetry. Each reveals themselves by telling a story about themselves that has another woman in it. In each case, the stories are inverted: where the teller is actually the other character in the story: a daughter instead of a mother; one twin sister instead of another. In both cases, the one inverted out is an actress.
We have similar mirrors throughout the film in terms of cinematic effect. One central and powerful scene literally involves mirrors, with each woman talking to the reflection of the other. Mirrors and architectural and cinematic symmetries feature in almost every shot that is not a closeup. Narrative symmetries occur, for instance we learn that one woman is a mechanical engineer focusing on human transit. She has invented a bike shaped in the form of a woman's back. The rider enters the woman's body. She admires the other's legs, the legs of an athlete and thinks of her future with this woman as a matter of running on her legs.
The ambiguous ending revolves on this running.
The score alternates between tango-of-souls music when in the dance, and ballads when watching it. Similarly, Medem is unafraid of having nooks and corners dark.
All of this structure is invisible, underpinning a deep engagement in love, seeing-knowing, and being. I urge you to see this. It is not just tears and blood you see. You bleed. You cry.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.