CANNES 2005 Directors’ Fortnight
Guernsey : Portrait of an absent woman
It is a real pleasure to see a Dutch film amongst the productions presented this year in Cannes for the 37th Directors’ Fortnight especially since, contrary to what its title says, Guernsey [+see also:
trailer
film profile], by Nanouk Leopold, is suffused with this quiet simplicity which characterizes the ‘Flat Land’. The images as well as the dialogues reflect this.
The main character, Anna (Maria Kraakman), is indeed a calm, un-fussy woman, who, after finding her colleague hung in the bathroom of their hotel, questions her whole life in the quietest way, without telling anybody —not even at the end.
What Anna finds disturbing is not the vision of a dead body so much as the way the deceased woman’s husband immediately finds ‘a new mother’ for his son —just like her own widowed father found a new partner with whom he intends to move to Guernsey, a place which, in this film, stands as a symbol of the fact that everybody is ‘replaceable’. Anna’s turmoil is summed up in this single question she asks her father about her mother: ‘Do you still think about her?’
Thus, Anna is led to wonder about her own couple from which she withdraws a little, as if her mind was somewhere else. She starts spying on her son and husband (who was initially her sister’s boyfriend), to see what they do when she is not around. But this very distance she takes from her life and her absent-mindedness provoke what she fears most : her husband meets another woman. At that point, the theme of rivalry starts intertwining with the notion of everybody’s ‘replaceability’ in the heart of the loved ones. Yet, as Anna shares her father’s belongings (the things he does not take to Guernsey) with her sister, she realises roles are not so clearly defined, for she, too, stole a man from her sister —she, too, is the other’ woman, the rival.
This sensitive and intimate film, produced by Stienette Bosklopper, is the director’s second feature (after Îles flottantes, presented, amongst other festivals, in competition at the 2001 Rotterdam International Film Festival). Guernsey was produced by Circe Films and co-produced by CosmoKino (Brussels) and VPRO Television. It was also supported by the Dutch Film Fund, the CoBO Fund, the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund, and the Flemish Audiovisual Fund. Guernsey is promoted by Holland Film.
(Translated from French)
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