I recently watched "In the Cut," and found its connectives strange and exciting. So I went to this to see them when young and raw.
Supposedly, this is Campion's first long form film. It didn't quite work as a film the first time because it is so fractionated. Her earlier "Passionless Moments" was in the Greenaway tradition of aggregating small bits, small glances, into a world. The same is carried here and though there is a story — something actually happens to a poor girl — the bits of the story do not connect. It frustrated me.
But then I got it. Breillat, for instance, stands on our side when telling us about women and especially girls. She gives the genuine insight but uses the smooth form. Campion stands on the girl's side: this fragmentation, this lack of narrative continuity, this disconnectedness from sense — it would be what the girl would experience.
"Each of us has a fragile presence that fades almost as it forms." That is Campion, literally. She captures that melting snowflake, the tragedy of the melt from within. The collapse of order.
There is nothing like visiting the beginnings of filmmakers you have come to trust.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
