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World premiere
Venice International
Film Critics' Week 2018
Otherness and difference(s) on M
and some necessary detours of contemporary cinema
GIONA A. NAZZARO
Artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival
I t-told you darling;
I don’t have any past.
“Marilyn” was born yesterday.
There’s only one thing that cinema can do today, reasonably. To reinvent its relationship not with the real – which is precisely the misunderstanding that hampers any reflection on cinema – but with the images that determine this so-called ‘real’. Film is based on the construction of consensus, like any other art: an aesthetic, formal, political, economic, and cultural consensus. You join a community of speakers attempting to (continue to) speak the language of those who established the perimeter of its circulation and usage value. Therefore, to engage in a dialectical conflict with existing images does not mean to confirm their value, but to try and discontinue the image of the real that they convey. Cinema can continue to exist only as vertigo of a reinvention of the real and, therefore, of our relationship with the images.
Film – based on the ontological relationship between the thing seen and the filming device, with the latterconfirming that the former existed – inevitably creates proof of its own existence. Film exists because it sees; and by seeing, it is in turn seen.
The really interesting cinema, today, is one that is aware of the existing images and (tries to) reinvent(s) itself in relation to itself: forgetting the images of film in order to rediscover itself in terms of gesture of filming and thinking cinema.
A woman whose body is desired while she herself – her real past, her ambitions, her fears, her ideas – is ignored, develops a deeply ambivalent relationship with that body. It does not quite belong to her, but rather to those who value it beyond her, and all she seems to have to offer them is the same body.
M – Anna Eriksson’s debut film, presented in competition at the 33rd Venice International Film Critics’ Week – is precisely the type of cinema that becomes possible when, with bravery and contempt for the dominant conformism, the thought and the filming gaze question themselves. In Anna Eriksson’s film, there is nothing that can reassuringly refer to already seen images, even though the film director proves to be an extremely attentive viewer (and cinephile). As she wanted to make her debut behind the camera at the height of aluminous and exemplary career as a musician, the artist – rather than playing the card of ostentatiouscinephilia – adopted cinema as a tool to probe the nature of her gaze and her body.
It is difficult to give an account of the surprise elicited on the first viewing of her film. M belongs to that very thin group of works that have the power to – almost – erase earlier images from the spectator’s memory.
Over the past few years, only Bertrand Mandico with his Wild Boys managed to elicit the same feeling of violent bewilderment in front of the pictures.
Anna Eriksson belongs in the group of film-makers who do not restrict themselves to directing films, but dare to strive for the creation of autonomous, self-sufficient universes. M is a journey into the deepest and most hidden regions of the night.
By signing the film in the first person – a film in which the neo-director is in charge of almost all artdepartments (script, editing, music, sound, set design, and costumes) – and giving it the burning image of her body, that overlaps with that of the ghost of Marilyn Monroe’s memory, the neo-director created an actual brain-film.
In one fell swoop, and with an unflappable carelessness, M manages to wipe out the so-called rules of ‘well-made’ cinema, thus creating a work of extreme modernity that, at the same time, refuses to be fashionable. On the contrary: M seems to surface from the darkest dungeons of the cinema forgotten by the guardians of taste and trends.
“Lorsque tu seras dans ton lit, que tu entendras les aboiements des chiens dans la campagne, cache-toi dans ta couverture, ne tourne pas en dérision ce qu’ils font: ils ont soif insatiable de l’infini, comme toi, comme moi, comme le reste des humains, à la figure pâle et longue. Même, je te permets de te mettre devant la fenêtre pour contempler ce spectacle qui est assez sublime”
Literally embodying a labyrinth whose keys she’s the sole owner – i.e., the Anna Eriksson film director and the Anna Eriksson body and image – the film director creates a centreless world; a universe in which time is re-thought as space. Constructed as a mourning song over Marilyn Monroe’s last months, the film creates a surprising – and never seen before – short-circuit between Kenneth Anger’s magick cinema (with the references to Horus and Ancient Egypt’s death mythology, for example) and the libertarian and purposely low practices of Jean Rollin’s most visionary work. All this is swathed in a noir dimension – Out of the Past– that cannot not evoke the memory of Jacques Tourneur and the space-time Detours of Edgar G. Ulmer.
The linguistic and political proposal formulated by Anna Eriksson is a radical swerve off our thinking and viewing habits. In this otherworldly voyage, beyond the thresholds of the known and practiced visible, the possibility of an ‘other’ cinema begins to gleam.
And in a double movement, where M and her image do not manage to escape the traps laid by the male gaze, the cinema – i.e., the same machine that allowed for M’s trap of images – proves to be a new possibility to resurface to life. It is the political and philosophical precision with which Anna Eriksson breaks down and exposes the ideology of the gaze and image that makes her film one of the most sensuous objects currently to be found.
In M, the cinema comes back as potential and danger. M is not a ghostly biopic on the icon of the Hollywood film industry, nor is a mise en abyme of her image. M plunges into the deepest, most fertile, and darkestregions of creativity – a dangerous, free creativity without instructions for use, that puts itself on the line giving up all safety nets.
Anna Eriksson restores into cinema its documentary radicalness, the principal characteristic of Méliès, wizard and inventor of forms who would often use his own body to test the limits and possibilities of thedevice. In her sensuous, menacing Sabbath, a mobile and mysterious, motionless and elusive, oneiric and material one, the film-maker offers the image of a freedom that is not banally anchored in statements of principle but in gestures that are signs of a free, powerful creation.
The film M plunges into such depths that separating the flesh from the gaze, or matter from dream, is almostimpossible. The high and noble stake of Anna Eriksson’s film lies in its total opening to the risk of getting lost as long as cinema regains the right of filming what cannot be seen and what is not matter is given substance.
In the end, what is the purpose of a film if not to restore our freedom, and the danger, and the risk that should be inexorably, inevitably associated to itself?
M is a film that dares to exist outside all the enclosures of acknowledged cinema and beyond all beaten paths – a declaration of resistance that rejects sheltering into any identity-based perimeter. M is the dawning of a radical gesture and of a wild thought.
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
The huge quantity of cultural material (Marilyn Monroe, film, images, mythology, etc…) is put on the line reviving the synchronic use of cultural and formal, political, and linguistic models. Breaking the illusion of teleology, Anna Eriksson offers herself as a dangerous film-maker for the conservatives of all latitudes and ideologies, but an absolutely necessary one for all those who, on the contrary, keep on pinning their hopes in a cinema that is capable of contributing to the debate on the redefinition of the status of the image.
Thus, the film, M, and the Anna Eriksson image become an utterly new form that inevitably mirrors the layered image that blessed the blonde star whose shadow looms benignly over its own pictures. “The real person overlapping with the role is functional to the fulfilment of the tragedy; however, regardless of Monroe’s tragic and mysterious end, hers could be just the story of a very pretty girl (the existing literature insists on the ‘ordinariness’ of Marilyn Monroe/Norma Jeane) victimized by fate, if the immense emotional scope and media impact exerted by cinema on the collective imaginary did not also come into play”.
For this reason – for the disturbing pleasure that M gives an audience that is consciously detached from established routes – the arrival of Anna Eriksson to the scene of cinema is an occasion that deserves to be celebrated.
Cinema should regain its nature as adventure and sensuality; mystery and perdition; risk, danger. To reconquer its rightful role, cinema should find again the spot in which the gaze intercepts the body and desire. Only out of this triangulation can an other, fresh seduction be born, free from a lazy, terminal exploitation of nostalgia for the past. Only in this way can cinema regain its rightful place.
M is a giant leap toward this direction.
The film, M, is a work of art that explores the relationship between sexuality and death. These two appear to be opposite forces, but in fact they merge in all of us, disguising the fear of death or the desire to die, the world of Eros and Thanatos.
In M the character inspired by Marilyn Monroe should be seen as a symbol of this interpenetration. The actress´s death is as famous as her sexuality and thus sets a perfect example of how the ancient bond between sex and death is being forever mystified and exploited by the popular culture. M attempts to explore this phenomenon in a much more personal level.
All the events in the work are fictional and they are set in no particular place or time. The work consists of film material that has been produced on and off in a time period of four years, beginning in March 2013 to December 2017. The footage was shot mainly in the home and grounds of Casa das Musas Art House in Nazare, Portugal. Other shooting locations were Litibu village in Mexico and Uusikaupunki, Finland.
All the actors in the work are non-professionals and were chosen because of their strong essence and character. Although the work is based on a script the roles and events were adjusted to fit the actors presence, and all of the dialogue was acted by the artist herself as voiceover.
At times the process of filming was on the verge of improvisation and therefore only the resulting material would fully determine how some of the scenes developed. This way of working turned out to be a crucial element of the work.
M is not an attempt to tell a story or redefine a character. In fact it is quite the opposite. The elements of film are being used as pathways for the artist to move in and out of the characters, each character representing somewhat a side of the artists own fantasy. By placing herself in the part of an object of fantasy the artist strives to understand the unity of sex and death, not merely as a myth in popular culture, but as an integral part of humanity.
The Film, M, Reviews
General Delegate Venice International Film Critics’ Week,
Giona A. Nazzaro
Film Critic, Kari Salminen
Film Critic, Nicole Bianchi
Filmmaker, Francois Grondin
Film Critic, Enrico Azzano
Film Critic, Beatrice Fiorentino
Film Critic, Carlo Valeri
Film Critic, Michele Giordano
Film Programmer, Antti Alanen
Journalist, Marta Balaga
Essayists, Sampsa Laurinen
Screenings
2020
NOV 20-25
Mexican Cineteca
State of Mexico
OCT 30
Visionär Film Festival Mainz
Germany
2019
NOV 15
Stuff Mx Film Festival
Mexico City, Mexico
OCT 5
Västerås Film Festival
Cinema Culturen
Västerås, Sweden
SEP 16
IF Istanbul
Cinemaximum Le Petite Prince
Istanbul, Turkey
SEP 3
New Cinema
Caisa
Helsinki, Finland
AUG 25
Blue Sea Film Festival
Rauma, Finland
AUG 24
Oulu Music Video Festival
Oulu, Finland
AUG 8
Prague Independent Film Festival
Prague, Czech Republic
JUL 25
Foco Finlandia
Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City
JULY 7
Vienna Independent Film Festival
Vienna, Austria
JUN 12
Midnight Sun Film Festival
Sodankylä, Finland
MAY 18
Arthouse Cinema Niagara
Tampere, Finland
MAY 10
Espoo Ciné
Espoo, Finland
MAY 9
Cinema Orion
Helsinki, Finland
MAY 3
Kino Diana
Turku, Finland
APR 4 - 21
LAB-1 Art Cinema Eindhoven
Eindhoven, Netherlands
APR 13
Suomalaisen Elokuvan Festivaali
Turku, Finland
APR 6
M Visionär Film Festival
ACUD Kunsthaus
Berlin, Germany
MAR 8
Tampere Film Festival, Finland
JAN 26
Oulu Film Centre
Oulu, Finland
2018
DEC 1
Pori Film Festival
Pori, Finland
NOV 18
Rokumentti Film Festival
Joensuu, Finland
NOV 16
Festival de Sevilla
Seville, Spain
NOV 16
Joburg Film Festival
Johannesburg, South Africa
NOV 3
Hanko Film Festival
Hanko, Finland
OCT 9
Festival Nouveau Cinema
Montreal, QC, Canada
OCT 4
Finnkino Maxim
Helsinki, Finland
OCT 3
Mirano, Italy
OCT 1
Treviso, Italy
SEP 28
Padova, Italy
SEP 26
Trento, Italy
SEP 22
Helsinki International Film Festival
Helsinki, Finland
The Film, M, World premiere
Venice International Film Critics Week
Venice Film Festival, 2018
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