Nora Longatti – Strangers

Fiction / 20 mn

Synopsis

A young woman collapses in the midst of an anonymous city. Strangers go by or bend over her. Strangers is a silent research on resonance in a world of passerbys.

Comment

An almost silent wide shot opens the film on a gray building, the entrance to number 36, framed by two balconies with sloping umbrellas. At the bottom of the building a form lies, we discover that it is a young woman... when she gets up. 

The narration repeats itself, slowly, the sets change at the rhythm of the falls, the camera is of a voluntary stability, it films like the witness of an external glance; the carefully chosen settings are graphic, of a beautiful sobriety, playing on a range of cold colors nuanced with some warm notes, the light is natural, everything is clean and simple.

This young woman falls - syncope fainting loss of consciousness abandonment? We don't know. She fades away from time for the space of a glance, she melts on the material until she finds herself on the ground, whether it is outside or inside, she collapses gently either with her head resting on a shoulder, or wrapped in arms, or brooded, or embraced, by human beings who, while being delicate, will watch over her until she wakes up, always silent and motionless, they will respect her temporality until she returns to movement. 

She finds the movement again, falls again, the narration repeats itself, her collapses punctuate the film like the refrain of a sweet lullaby. Hush! Let her fall. 

Stéphane Lévy, DOP