L'annulaire

Very fine film, beautifully photographed and directed with a wonderful central performance from Olga Kurylenko, who of course, has deservedly gone on to find fame and fortune, while this gem languishes, barely seen. I had never heard of it when I picked it up but am certainly glad I did. Based on a book by Japanese author Yoko Ogawa this is a marvellously quirky tale on the nature of obsession and possession. Some have mentioned David Lynch and I would have thought most of his fans would enjoy this. Set mainly in the port of Hamburg, we get a fantastic painterly picture with the increasingly strange happening inside as people visit to have painful memories preserved and thereby contained. Very Japanese in concept and this would have worked more easily in a Japanese setting but this is still a unique experience well worth seeing. Oh, and I almost forgot mesmerising score from Beth Gibbons, which is sadly not available.

A city with no name, a young woman with no history, a house apart - a strange island in a sea of trees. I like the lack of references to anything external to this system. The world of this movie is airtight. I'm reminded of the famous story retold by W. Somerset Maugham, "Appointment in Samarra", where a man, upon bumping into Death in the streets of Baghdad, flees to Samarra to avoid his wrath, but instead runs into Death who is waiting for him in Samarra, and whose anger at the jostling in Baghdad is revealed to have been mere surprise, as he had been expecting to see the man in Samarra later in the day. The sealed nature of this film demands a focus on inevitability.

A young woman, Iris, wanders alone in the port area of the city, along superannuated towpaths, past the gigantic hulks of international shipping; outside of work the closest she comes to really being with others is staring at prostitutes behind plate glass, or contemplating entering a bar. There's something brutal about the isolation of Iris by the filmmaker. When I reviewed In The City of Sylvia, similarly a beautiful movie with an isolated character, I said that the filmmaker should either have won the Golden Lion at Venice or have been brutally murdered; I've similar feelings here.

Today is Sunday and I've been sat in a deserted office building writing this review, ostensibly here to study for exams, but procrastinating somewhat. The morning streets are almost empty, a white contrail hints at faraway adventures that I'll never be part of, the river is full of empty boats. There is nothing good about being alone; the beauty of it is only a subtle form of cruelty.

The soundtrack of the movie is done by Beth Gibbons of Portishead; its fractured entropised lilt is just right; you only ever catch fragments of lyrics.

Iris gets work as the sole employee in the strange set aside laboratory. The laboratory offers a simple service whereby people may come and, for a fee, have items preserved and stored away. This seems quite a perverse thing to do. Memory, which it seems this film is about, IS perverse. Recently I wrote three poems to a woman I love, who I later learnt has no desire to be with me, I never gave them to her. A colleague tells me I should burn them, and that is perhaps the best thing to do, but perversity wills me to preserve them, to torture myself. Memory becomes viscous ooze in which you are trapped, finally it solidifies and turns into amber. People (mostly children) who can live in the moment, truly do not know how lucky they are.

Some have called the film erotic, however the erotic whilst present, is as intangible as a passing cloud on a sunny day. Marc Barbé's conserver remains inscrutable and devoid of passion during sex scenes. Sex scenes with him are no more or less sensual than seeing a spider cocooning a fly, trapped for inclusion in its larder. One quite disturbing picture from above shows us an image of his head on Iris' body, he is merely consuming her.

Other aspects of the erotic are fetishistic, the focus on the shoes that Iris is made to wear for her work, her clothing, which the sailor who sleeps in her room in the morning feels and smells in her absence. The movie brought to mind for me Magritte's two famous fetishistic paintings, The Red Model, and Philosophy in the Boudoir, both of which show clothing suggesting the female form. (Philosophy in the Boudoir also came to mind during In The City of Sylvia).

Mahjong came into play as it does in all good surreal movies (cross-reference to Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa). You could if you want see Iris as a flower tile, and the laboratory door as the white dragon tile (which is a blank tile in Mahjong, or blankness with a rectangular border). These are symbolic, but I don't want to spoil the movie by mentioning how.

Do not watch this movie, arrange to have all copies burnt!

This little gem was Olga Kurylenko's (Quantum of Solace, Hit-man, Paris, je t'aime) first film. That is the only thing that attracted me to it. She has a beauty that just draws you in no matter what she stars in.

She has to do a lot of acting in this film, as it is short on dialog. She injures herself in an industrial accident and ends up in a situation with a strange man in a strange job, and sharing a room with a sailor who works nights. The only interaction with the sailor is through what he leaves in the room, but the relationship with her boss takes on an erotic turn.

Despite the absolutely awesome display of femininity by Kurylenko in the musical and visual feast, there just wasn't enough story to carry this all the way.

SO..... WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???

Haunting musical score, disturbingly unsettling erotic scenes, perturbing voyeuristic encounters, Olga Kurylenko as eye candy, preserve-and-cherish-those-best-moments-of-your-life metaphors, artistic and interesting visuals...

Put all these diverse elements into a cinematic blender and what do you get? A Film-Making 101 textbook example of the total being LESS than the sum of its parts! I've been asking myself the "What the H*LL is this?" question incessantly for hours since spending 90 minutes as a "voyeur" of this experiment. And...As yet, there just doesn't seem to be an answer!

The director, Diane Bertrand, seems to be assiduously and blatantly giving us the title (sans "Ring") for the duration! The film revolves around a mysterious "clinic" where people go to have important life-relics "preserved"...In theory, at least. In practice, these supposedly priceless articles are soon forgotten about. It's difficult to empathize with any of the characters in the film because they're all so creepy, to one extent or another. Even Kurylenko's character is more off-putting than not.

The supposedly "erotic" scenes are reminiscent of watching someone getting violated by their orthodontist during a root canal procedure. A rather self-indulgent piece of film-making, it's not hard to imagine dozens of Director Bertrand's friends gathered at her home for a private screening shouting "C'est Magnifique!" and "Incroyable!" afterward! As if this weren't enough, many segments are painfully languidly paced.

"FINGER" might have faired a little better after a second viewing, but I'm not motivated in the least to see it again.

3***........ ENJOY! / DISFUTELA!??!?...(If You Can Manage!)

Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome!

This film did not turn up on my radar back in 2005. That's not surprising, I think, given the complexity and opaqueness of the story which together renders such a movie as box-office poison. It is, however, a cleverly contrived fable about unresolved needs and dreams – and all with a distinct nod to David Lynch, arguably the master of complex mystery and film-making – and all dressed up with appropriate symbolism and metaphor.

Every city has lonely people and Iris (Olga Kurylenko) is one such young woman working as a drudge on an assembly line in a bottling factory at a major sea port. Her face is set, sullen and almost sad as she helps the bottles along clattering rollers. She doesn't see a broken bottle and cuts her ring finger badly, gushing copious blood around. The wound is dressed at a medical office where, overcome by stress and pain, she lapses into sleep, almost in a fetal position.

With a quick jump-cut, we next see Iris renting a room at a seaport dive for sailors – a direct symbol for one of her needs – and then obtaining a job as an "office manager" at an obscure laboratory where she assists with the screening of people who wish to preserve things of value. The pale-faced laboratory owner (Marc Barbe) is authoritative, austere, and abrupt at first, and always dressed the same: black trousers and shoes, white shirt and long white laboratory coat that billows out as he strides around each day, seeing to the work within the 100 plus rooms in the old college he bought to house all the preserved "specimens" he keeps for clients.

As time passes, he becomes more interested in Iris, more attentive and finally more possessive – providing a clue as to why prior female office managers had apparently left hurriedly. Iris, however, allows herself to succumb to his wishes and desires – and thereby satisfies another of her secret needs; and which also result in the brief, highly erotic love making that simply confirms the depth of her deprived emotional needs. Incidentally, as part of their "contract" he insists that she wears a pair of high-heeled red shoes – always.

At the same time, Iris also evinces interest in the young sailor at the hotel with whom she shares a room but – he being on shift work – without ever seeing him, only savoring the lingering smell on his bed and clothes. It appears that the sailor is equally interested when we see him doing the same with her clothes when alone in the room.

Curiosity, though, drives Iris even further with her need to see the laboratory in which specimens are prepared. She asks her employer if she can see him work, but he refuses. But she persists as she gains more favor with him and eventually manages to convince him she is worthy.

Few viewers, I think, will be satisfied with the closing scenes and may remain mystified. They do, however, provide closure for the entire story and Iris's experience.

The film is distinctive with just enough dialog, long takes, seemingly erratic cuts, a riveting sound track that's difficult to hear properly, and mostly nameless characters, including an enigmatic shoe-shine expert of fifty years. It all adds to the mystery but some viewers will be dissatisfied, even repelled.

From that overall perspective, and like David Lynch, the director (Diane Bertrand) has left viewers to interpret the story according to their own beliefs and experiences. Like Lynch's movies, there are long, dark corridors, extreme close-ups, unexplained scenes (for example, Iris swinging on the end of a large crane cable's hook), unexplained time shifts, unexplained appearances of others who seem to add nothing to the story, and, of course, an enigmatic ending. Bertrand doesn't achieve the same type of suspense, though; that, however, may be deliberate because the subject matter here doesn't have the same darkly evil connotations so evident in most of what Lynch has done.

Still, if you like Lynch, I highly recommend this film; and the director, as an interesting and promising companion, perhaps. Give this a seven.

August 2011.