À Deriva

"Drift" is a film of all-encompassing boredom; watching it makes watching paint dry seem like a ride on a rollercoaster. It has two characters, both women, who start off together then drift apart, (geddit?), as they drift across seas which drift ... well, wherever seas drift, I guess. They don't say much and director Helena Wittmann's camera watches them...drifting. As an exercise in 'pure' film-making, (nothing feels 'constructed', every image is simply 'as it is', held at times for what feels like an eternity), it is certainly honest and perhaps even fascinating if you can get past the fact that absolutely nothing whatsoever happens but there's no denying that many of the images have their own beauty. Of course, it's also massively self-indulgent, a well-made home-movie that Wittmann has inflicted on the rest of us. I think I would have preferred to watch paint dry.