Martel’s 2nd film picks right up where here debut left off with the great staging and layering in the frame. Instead of the lounging drinking bourgeois we have professors at a crowded hotel/conference center and catholic school girls in school
Collage of a narrative more interested in discussions and the textured frames than story
Bunuel for sure is an influence- hypocrisy in the intellectual elite—but Martel is quieter in her critiques
Some surrealism moments and it’s a story of sexual awakenings
You have to get past the opening credits- which look like they were created in PowerPoint
Heavy close-ups and staggered heads peppered through the frame again and again
I felt a little bit of Sofia Coppola’s isolation and sexual awakening here with a group of girls with the virgin suicides— captured almost
shallow focus—goes with the surrealism scenes and close-up emphasis—a lot of the film is almost shot like the close-up whisper scene in lost in translation
The staging is very impressive- it’s a pure and dedicated aesthetic choice that would otherwise be tough to archive. Repeatedly shows characters in half of frame- detailed framing.
Weaving in and out of that narrative collage of different locations (school, conference hall, street with the scene and the sexual incident, cafeteria)
Unsatisfying overly understated ending in the swimming pool with the two girls. Wink to La Ciénaga
Leave A Comment