I have loved the filmography of Alice Rohrwache, her films are unique with the right number of aesthetic choices that help enrich the experience. The emotions are well-placed and has right mix of drama, great cinematography, and soundtrack. So, I was excited for her new short film and I can say that I haven't watched a short this number of times recently. I know it's a mood piece, a home video with a simple theme shot during the lockdown as Alice Rohrwache explores the rural Italian countryside and spends time in the vicinity observing the neighbours. Sounds very plain right, but It's so hard to put into words why I loved this short so much as none of the descriptions do the justice.
The narration has this very calm tone, it's told in a visual essay where there's a lot of things happening with the neighbours as she divulges into the magic eye of the camera. The experimental shifts and the color tone are amazing and a majority of the short is paced properly and well. It is a meditative feeling with a poetic narrative, and few may tag it in the documentary category. But more than a straight documentary, this short is a deeply poetic shot beautifully on 16mm film and it's a real joy to experience it.
"Four Roads" will work differently with different people and some won't even see the point of the short as it seemingly goes nowhere. But If you're familiar with experimental works of Jorge Honik, Masanobu Nakamura, Isao Kota, Isao Yamada, Sky Hopinka, Jonas Mekas, Misuzu Nishimura, Jun'ichi Mori, Ute Aurand, Soon-rye Yim, Dorian Jespers, Margaret Tait, Sumiko Haneda, Takashi Ito, Masaki Iwana, Sasha Waters Freyer, Katsumi Aoi, Bruce Baillie, Makoto Satô, Pablo Marin, Jerome Hiler, Teo Hernández, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Franco Piavoli, Stan Brakhage, Stefan Jarl, Michael Pilz and Naomi Kawase. It's a MUST SEE.
