Film Festival 09 - A Lake
A Lake
Un lac, France 2008, 90m
Directors: Philippe Grandrieux
Festivals: Venice, Pusan, London 2008
Like Sokurov's Mother and Son, Philippe Grandrieux's majestically
strange and beautiful film contains only the barest of narratives,
making its eerily elemental impact through imagery, and a
soundscape shaped from human breath. We are in a misty,
snow-covered region of alpine lakes and precipitous rock faces, an
unnamed landscape of almost cosmic grandeur and stillness. A young
woodcutter lives in these mountains with his sister, brother and
blind mother. His solitude is only intensified when a handsome
young stranger comes to work with them. These figures are glimpsed
as fleeting presences in ominous landscapes that resemble the
Gothic fantasies of 19th-century painting. More often they are
encountered, huddled, as anxious as scared animals, in intimate
close-up.
"Transcendent& to those with a taste for cinema that delivers
raw feeling via elaborate and tersely fashioned mise en
scène, it's an absolute must." - David Jenkins, Time
Out
In French with English subtitles
