It's an eerily atmospheric, piercing short, its remarkably well-made portraying the characters in the liminal state of the invisible servant and being free.
The film elegantly conveys these oversized spaces. Coming from the kitchen quarters, which is silent from voice, but vibrate in the variety of props that fill the punctuates the frame with character. When we then track into the meandering hallway, and up the broad stairs, it's all inscrutably blank and interchangeable. Spaces that feel like a precursor to the Mexican modern servant film The Chambermaid, which is one of my favourite film of the last few years, unfortunately showing how an invisible domestic class still produces the luxury for the upper classes.
These spaces are carefully framed by the statues-still servants, which a times feel like ornaments that are the fabric of the house; seen when they're needed and easily ignored and other times they float like ghosts with their own full lives and hidden secrets.
The sounds of sieving, chopping and pour of water made me think of the films of Hirokazu Koreeda and the symbolism of cooking in his complicated family dramas. Similar to Koreeda's film 'Still Walking' the opening shots are a perfect, action-oriented introduction to a focused, driven character. The still wide of the kitchen allows Maria to navigate her environment, and we're left to witness their connection and feel the vibrating tensions.
Simmering the dense narrative to a tension mission of delivering the letter is a fantastically compelling device. When the hand-held electric chase through the backs of the rooms leads to the passionate scene when Maria hands the lord the letter it's a raw acted glimpse of emotional intensity, that has entirely been boiling away prior and post this moment.
The letter scene fantastically mirrors the scene in the shadows where the lord offers the Dinca to be free. When the lady's facade is down and (in one of the only scenes without servants on hand), she is also allowed to be raw with emotions. Both characters maternal vulnerable instincts for Dinca drives their motivations in very stark ways. As Maria has accepted her own loss of free-living, and in a very selfless act wants to ensure Dinca's life is free. At the same time, the lady has never got other her betrayal but also his death and has a complicated and vulnerable connection to Dinca, that she can't risk losing.
The idea of a liminal disposition kept coming back to me-the concept of the characters living in perjury, in a Waiting for Godot state. Between living and dead, the notion that all life has been drained from them, they are just a fragment of a former person. Although Dinca has once stepped into the land of the living, had a taste and has gone back. He moves; differently, he's looked at individually is has a bit of life and ultimately doesn't fit into any space.
The film brilliantly shows two lonely women riddled with lose of the treat of loss wrestle to keep Dinca in this limbo. The film strikingly explores the broader context (that I been thinking a lot of recently) of the selfishness of a white upper or middle class's and ultimately their ignorance of trying to control their own emotions and the repercussions of their actions in a systemic sense.
The film elegantly conveys these oversized spaces. Coming from the kitchen quarters, which is silent from voice, but vibrate in the variety of props that fill the punctuates the frame with character. When we then track into the meandering hallway, and up the broad stairs, it's all inscrutably blank and interchangeable. Spaces that feel like a precursor to the Mexican modern servant film The Chambermaid, which is one of my favourite film of the last few years, unfortunately showing how an invisible domestic class still produces the luxury for the upper classes.
These spaces are carefully framed by the statues-still servants, which a times feel like ornaments that are the fabric of the house; seen when they're needed and easily ignored and other times they float like ghosts with their own full lives and hidden secrets.
The sounds of sieving, chopping and pour of water made me think of the films of Hirokazu Koreeda and the symbolism of cooking in his complicated family dramas. Similar to Koreeda's film 'Still Walking' the opening shots are a perfect, action-oriented introduction to a focused, driven character. The still wide of the kitchen allows Maria to navigate her environment, and we're left to witness their connection and feel the vibrating tensions.
Simmering the dense narrative to a tension mission of delivering the letter is a fantastically compelling device. When the hand-held electric chase through the backs of the rooms leads to the passionate scene when Maria hands the lord the letter it's a raw acted glimpse of emotional intensity, that has entirely been boiling away prior and post this moment.
The letter scene fantastically mirrors the scene in the shadows where the lord offers the Dinca to be free. When the lady's facade is down and (in one of the only scenes without servants on hand), she is also allowed to be raw with emotions. Both characters maternal vulnerable instincts for Dinca drives their motivations in very stark ways. As Maria has accepted her own loss of free-living, and in a very selfless act wants to ensure Dinca's life is free. At the same time, the lady has never got other her betrayal but also his death and has a complicated and vulnerable connection to Dinca, that she can't risk losing.
The idea of a liminal disposition kept coming back to me-the concept of the characters living in perjury, in a Waiting for Godot state. Between living and dead, the notion that all life has been drained from them, they are just a fragment of a former person. Although Dinca has once stepped into the land of the living, had a taste and has gone back. He moves; differently, he's looked at individually is has a bit of life and ultimately doesn't fit into any space.
The film brilliantly shows two lonely women riddled with lose of the treat of loss wrestle to keep Dinca in this limbo. The film strikingly explores the broader context (that I been thinking a lot of recently) of the selfishness of a white upper or middle class's and ultimately their ignorance of trying to control their own emotions and the repercussions of their actions in a systemic sense.
