Perception_de_Ambiguity

Celles qui s'en font' comprises of two little scenarios, each about three minutes in length. The first shows an obviously poor, "triste" and probably already a little crazy, fairly young woman sitting outside of a pub/bar/whatever having a drink. With great sadness and some disdain she watches the cheerful people around her, then gets up and walks through the streets, sees herself in a mirror and tears start running down her face. The second scenario is in a similar vein, at least in terms of overall feel. A young, unhappy woman strolls through the streets and through flashbacks we see why she is so gloomy. Maybe the scenarios aren't connected but the two women were played by the same actress so I interpreted the second one as quasi being a flashback of the first one (she has a missing tooth in the first scenario so that one would definitely have to come later).

It's all pretty simple, much more poetic realist instead of superimpressionistic like a lot of Dulac's other works. Nevertheless the emotions as well as the localities are very palpable. I was very much reminded of especially the first section of Jean Epstein's 'Coeur fidèle' like when the characters in that film stand or sit ashore and absentmindedly gaze into the ocean. Instead of a longing for love the predominant feeling here is one of utter loneliness and hopelessness.

But probably the most noteworthy thing about this so-called "silent" film is that it is meant to be shown with two specific chansons for a soundtrack. I think it wouldn't be a stretch to make a case for the film to be the first music video ever made, at any rate it apparently was meant to serve as an illustration of two songs. 'Celles qui s'en font' is featured on disc 1 of the DVD box set "Retour de Flamme" (which is also available as individual DVDs) and it shows the film with its intended soundtrack. In the film it looks like the protagonists are mumbling to themselves, which would seem to fit their characters well enough, and this is maybe even what they are supposed to do in the story, but I'm convinced that more than that they are also mouthing the vocals of the songs. In the DVD restoration(?) however the mouth movement never really matches the vocals, so I think something isn't right. Maybe the footage is incomplete, maybe the frame-rate is off, or maybe the music is just not synchronized well. This is quite unfortunate, but at least one gets the general idea of what Germaine Dulac (probably) intended.

One IMDb reviewer wrote that the two chansons that the soundtrack consists of ("Toute seule" & "A la dérive", both performed by Fréhel) were recorded in 1930 and concluded that thus instead of 1928 the film more likely was also made in 1930 (or possibly shortly thereafter), which seems like a very reasonable conclusion to me.

'Fatal Frame' is a Japanese lesbian coming-of-age Gothic ghost mystery with a very Victorian flair, all romanticism, no kink, all yearning, and no consummation. Innocent love? Yes. But anything but harmless.

To go into the film's plot without missing the point its mysteries (and even its main characters) are a bit too ever-changing and evolving, instead I'll say that the main motive of the film has to be John Everett Millais' 'Ophelia', and the film does justice to that evocative painting that is as beautiful as it is tragically sad and even unsettling. The supernatural element (ghosts) can easily be read as manifestations of extreme (often suppressed) emotions like unrequited (and forbidden) love while also being manifestations of a traumatic past. The mysteriousness and eeriness of the film doesn't just exist for its own sake but serves as an apt reflection of what its teenage characters are going through, with their feelings being new, mysterious or even scary to themselves.

If you want to know what you can expect from this film, 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is probably a good reference point in terms of the Victorian girls' boarding school setting, the ethereal beauty, as well as the eeriness in broad daylight. The plot also involves girls suddenly disappearing, but the way in which this fits into the narrative and its function has much more in common with 'Ringu' and its dooming curse than it does with the inexplicable mysteriousness of nature in the Peter Weir classic. But in terms of the general look, feel and pacing it can be somewhat compared to 'A Tale of Two Sisters'. The way in which the mysteries pile up without ever losing the plot and having everything neatly come together is more in line with Vincenzo Natali's 'Haunter' or maybe a compressed version of a mystery anime series.

Even though its eeriness I thought was at its highest towards the beginning and in the last section the piling up of mysteries and their explanations exceed the film's climactic point, the atmosphere never lets up, nor does the subdued beauty of its visuals (I love the texture and color palette of its 16mm Kodak film stock) ever lose its classical magic. 'Fatal Frame' is conceived in the modern Japanese storytelling mode (teen-centric, lots of emotion-centric voice-overs that never leave you in doubt about character motivations, etc.), which isn't to everyone's liking, but if you are OK with this or maybe even have an affinity for that mode and if my other descriptions also sounded good to you then this one comes highly recommended.

I would describe 'I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House' as a Gothic short story (or maybe even a Gothic poem) brought to the screen. But forget about all the tropes and visuals that are associated with this genre, it is instead focused on what for me is the essential element of Gothic literature: The dead are alive. This doesn't seem like much to build a narrative on, and the driving force of "Pretty" indeed is not plot, nor characters, nor the solving of a mystery. And while all three things are embedded into its narrative it is first and foremost a tone poem. An important thing about the the-dead-are-alive notion, especially in this film, is that it goes both ways. The living can sense the presence of the dead (AKA ghosts), but the dead actually live on after their death, probably mostly concerned with reliving their past, but they might also be able to sense the living. So who is haunting who?

Consequently "Pretty" presents a ghost story within a ghost story, to put it in simplified terms. In more concrete terms the plot concerns Lily, a nurse who stays in the house of elderly horror fiction writer Iris Blum, to take care of her until her death, which shouldn't be too far into the future now. But it also wouldn't be too wrong to say that the main character is the house that had a few occupants over the course of its lifetime. I don't mean this in the tired old this-and-that-place-is-like-another-character-in-the-film way, the personality of the house certainly is made up of all the people who lived in it. But writer-director Oz Perkins takes the expression "If these walls could talk" and makes it a reality. It is about the people who lived in the house (or more correctly the people who died in it), but for all intents and purposes the main character is the house itself.

"Pretty" starts with nurse Lily's first day at the house and her opening narration tells us that she just turned 28 years old, but that she will never be 29. She talks about death, memory and says "From where I am now, I can be sure of only a very few things." One of those things is her name. So right from the beginning we know that Lily (at least Lily as a narrator) is already dead. Logic dictates that what we see on screen are her hazy memories of her short time in the house. Can we trust her words and can we trust what we see?

In any case, old Iris Blum doesn't talk much. But she keeps calling Lily by the name of Polly. And Lily seems to sense some ghostly presence in the house. Polly, as we soon learn, is the main character of Blum's most famous novel "The Lady in the Walls", a novel of which Blum said it lacks an ending because of "an obligation to be true to the subject" for Polly didn't tell Blum about her ending, but Blum tells us that she is convinced that "as endings go, Polly's was not an especially pretty one." Incidentally there also slowly emerges an ugly, moldy stain on one of the walls in the house that Lily grows concerned about. Is there some connection?

Perkins leaves the viewer in the dark for most of the film's running time about the concrete connections between all the characters, as slow and eventless as the whole thing is it is difficult to keep track of all the points of view. For example Lily isn't the only one whose voice-over we hear, we also hear and see young Blum as she writes the novel, and we hear and see Polly. Those voices also aren't particularly easy to distinguish, and it gets even more complicated when scaredy cat Lily finally dares to pick up "The Lady in the Walls" to read at least parts of it, the content of which is told from both Blum's and Polly's point of view. Through the viewer's natural desire to know the answers the film evokes ideas on the way as we contemplate all the possible answers. Did Polly really exist? Is she buried behind the wall? Are Lily and Polly somehow the same person? Is Lily a fictional character altogether? Or is Lily only imagining things?

Like a poem or a song it evokes first and foremost a tone, a mood, and sparks ideas of what it might be about. It takes further readings/listens to find that in between all the lines it actually tells a story, a simple story perhaps, but nevertheless a story. And this is actually how 'I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House' worked for me. The tone and the ideas immediately took hold of me, but it took me two viewings to really make sense of the narrative. This isn't without its drawbacks, because frankly it isn't so much difficult to follow because it floods you with information that you need to sort out, on the contrary, it basically is so eventless that it poses a challenge to stay attentive for the whole time. This was, however, clearly a conscious choice by Perkins, and his approach is nothing if not consequential. But it makes criticisms of the film being "boring" particularly understandable in this case, "Pretty" indeed is very one-note, and unless it is a note you relish or that you learn to relish, it won't be enough for you to satisfyingly get you through a whole feature film.

As it turned out after two viewings, the solution to the mystery is quite concrete and surprisingly not at all convoluted. Nevertheless the ending for me is as chilling as it is simple, and it beautifully circles back onto itself, like a chorus that keeps coming back, just what you would expect a story told by a ghost to be.