21/11/2024 - Latvia’s Signe Birkova draws inspiration from surrealism, expressionism and silent film to create a visually radical feature about a female avant-garde pioneer

On the classical festival circuit, there aren’t many films like Lotus [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Sure, filmmakers flirt with analogue and express their fondness for the early days of cinema, but for Signe Birkova, it goes beyond mere flirtation.

Birkova has consequently embraced the niche. She’s one of the founders of the Baltic Analog Lab in Riga. Her past works, including the short He Was Called Chaos Bērziņš (2018 – see the interview) and her debut feature-length documentary, Ring of Fire (2021), have been highly experimental and conceptual, focusing on alien abduction and an independent theatre troupe called “Kvadrifrons” inhabiting a former circus arena. And now, screening in Tallinn Black Nights’ First Feature Competition, comes Lotus, a meticulously executed homage to the cinematograph and silent-film era. Although the film exudes nostalgia, containing nods to Tarkovsky, Méliès and Dreyer, among others, Lotus isn’t just a string of references. Birkova’s vision is present throughout. 

Set in 1919, the film follows Alice von Trotta (Lithuanian actress Severija Janušauskaitė), a fictional woman of Baltic-German descent who initially comes to Latvia to deal with an inherited manor but finds herself on a path towards becoming an avant-garde and silent-film pioneer. It’s a dense storyline with an abundance of peculiar characters (countryside weirdoes, cineastes, a demonic gang), generous historical and cinematic referential material, and multiple underlying themes (identity, creative expression, mysticism). However, the rich array of elements weakens the storyline, as it loses its narrative sharpness owing to the fact it takes too many detours.

When writing about narrative construction in avant-garde films (Abstraction in Avant-garde Films, 1985), cinema theoretician Maureen Turim noted that a classical narrative is nearly always absent in such movies. Turim wrote that avant-garde follows its own narrative logic, being a “more extreme application of the principles of rupture, deviation and change”. Lotus has an inner phantasmagorical logic that contributes to the dreamlike atmosphere, yet which also affects the protagonist’s character arc by making it feel fragmented and ephemeral. Alice, a foreigner entering the Latvian-dominated world and a male-dominated profession, gets lost amid the plenitude and buzz generated by the other characters. 

Thus, the carefully crafted and ambitious visuality becomes the real protagonist of Lotus. Fully analogue and with a part of the film shot on a 100-year-old camera specially acquired for this movie (thanks to DoP Mārtiņš Jurevics), it is a mesmerizingly beautiful watch. Just consider the depiction of the forests bathed in navy twilight tones or the orange glow of the dawn, the portrayal of the Viva la Mort theatre crowd, or the sister Ambrosia’s (Baiba Broka) film-within-a-film. Yet, the aesthetic intensity occasionally borders on decorative excess, leaving little breathing space or relief from the visual feast.

One of the wittiest subplots is the esoteric practices blending seamlessly with the performance arts. It’s fun to watch Jānis Putniņš’s portrayal of George Gurdjieff, the Greek-Armenian mystic acting as an eccentric acting coach. Gurdjieff emphasises the parallels between acting, illusion and hypnosis, also embracing an authoritarian director figure that aims to “wash the scum away” to mould his actors.

The analogy between demonic forces and the realities of cinema financing is equally ironical. The scenes featuring the Mephistophelic Madam Falstaff (Rēzija Kalniņa), the horned devil-like creature on a train platform, and Mr Segliņš's (Vilis Daudziņš) remark that selling one's soul to the devil is a prerequisite for securing film financing serve as a clever metaphor for the cinema pitching reality.

Lotus is an ambivalent watch – a fragmented film, yet a true delicacy for hardcore cinephiles, pagans, reference hunters and those seeking to escape reality for at least two hours. 

Lotus was produced by Latvia’s Studio Locomotive and Lithuania’s Studio Uljana Kim.