Avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton

A wonderful combination of beautiful music beautifully played and Chantal Akerman's inventive, but not intrusive filming of the wildly talented cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton.

The short documentary starts with Wieder-Atherton telling the story of how she came to fall in love; first with music in general, and then with the cello, and goes on tell how she found her specific style, using the music to try and almost form words of communication. It's a delightful and enlightening interview. This is followed by Wieder-Atherton playing 6 short pieces of quite different styles, from the heartbreaking melodies of Schubert and Brahms to Berio's more edgy modern sounds.

Akerman sometimes photographs Wieder-Atherton and her fellow musicians through foreground objects, slowly dollying the camera to reveal different perspectives on the players. Akerman also uses a nice mix of close ups and wider shots, which is important, since Wieder- Atherton is the kind of musician who plays with her whole body, her body language as expressive as her face. A lovely film.

This is available from Europe as part of a 2 DVD + 1CD set which includes this film along with 2 other documentaries Akerman did on Wieder-Atherton on the DVDs, and excerpts from the soundtrack for Akerman's film "A Couch in New York" on the CD (featuring Wieder-Atherton)