Rapt in a mirror

vidéo 4/3 monobande, 7mn, 2002





À l’origine, des photographies autrefois prises dans un hôtel de Londres. De cette capture intuitive semblait surgir une fiction, une double fiction.

"An interesting essay in suspense made on the basis of only a few images, mostly photographs. The sounds suggest a situation of growing tension, the voice over which begins and doses the video points to violence and blackmail, while what we actually see is a woman in a bathroom and the reflection in the mirror of a man lurking menacingly in the darkness behind her. The grain of the photographs is digitally zoomed to appear like the surface of a painting - indeed the final frame, when the woman turns around and screams, clearly refers to Caravaggio's Head of the Medusa, in a close web of visual quotations and symbolic references. The video benefits from excellent editing, perfectly paced, with a backdrop of sound that builds up the sensation of claustrophobia and entrapment, while the few exterior shots are all nocturnal, again in heavy grain : a lighted window in the night through which the viewer, powerless to intervene, must watch voyeuristically an act of violence."

Romano Fattorossi, Invideo 2002, Mutations