By Dimitri Keramitas
Brazilian
director Carlos Segundo has made an arresting, engaging movie with Fendas,
but it probably will not be everyone’s cup of coffee.
On one level,
the film is a meditation on reality versus perception, and, on another, it’s a
speculation about how scientific research into natural phenomena may enable us
to comprehend emotional states.
This makes Fendas
sound very cerebral, and while the science may pull in some viewers, it may
leave others feeling adrift. Yet Fendas - a French-Brazilian coproduction
that was making the festival rounds before the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns -
also has a gritty and sensual texture true to its South American characters and
environment. The combination is what makes the film original, if not entirely
successful.
So, Catarina’s
research explores the possibility that sounds, particularly those related to living
beings, may be conjured out of visual images - out of captured light, and she
takes photographs in pursuit of this prospect.
We can’t really
see Catarina in teaching mode, however, because the professors are on strike,
leaving the school where she works looking like a ghost town, and this is one
of two destabilizing events for her. The other is the disappearance of her cat.
She continues to come to the classroom, to chat with the sole student who shows
up. But we never hear of the cat again in the movie. Does it simply symbolize
loss?
From a
layperson’s perspective, though, there’s enough to spark interest. The earliest attempt
to record sound, for instance, was with the phonautograph of Frenchman Edouard
Léon-Scott de Martinville, via graphic notation. For more than a century there
was no way to mechanically retrieve the sounds in question, but now, using
digital methods, researchers have unlocked the old sounds and brought them back
to life - using photographs of the original notation that consequently enabled
them to reproduce the sounds.
This idea of
the role of pictures in sound is pushed further when the director shows us
large, disconcerting image-blobs - Catarina’s blow-ups of the photographs she’s
taken. This is also reminiscent of Blow-Up (about a photographer who
discovers that a detail in a photo actually depicts a murder when it’s
magnified), and Brian DePalma’s unofficial remake Blowout (a murder
mystery as well, but focused on sound recording).
Yet Segundo
equally punctuates his film with black-outs, hinting at the futility of
obtaining any definitive meaning from the images.
At first, the
main question of the film seems to concern speculative physics. But then the
science merges into a kind of spiritualism, the idea that sounds and images may
persist beyond time, even after the death of the persons captured in
recordings. We’re reminded of the spiritualists of the 19th and early 20th
century who claimed to depict ghostly auras (in the most literal sense) in photographs,
most of which were debunked. This becomes linked to the tragic fate of that
lone student, Henrique, and also to Catarina’s past relationship with a
Frenchman.
Anything is
possible, especially in the quantum universe, we think at first. Yet quantum
mechanics, subatomic particles, and theory apply only tenuously to our macro,
organic reality. So, we begin to wonder about Catarina’s emotional state. She’s
beautifully played by Rangel, vividly present physically, and also in her
relationships and conversations. This physical quality is emphasized by the
director’s filming in a grainy 16mm-ish texture. In addition, there are shots
of stark scenery and rough Brazilian terrain as well as cliff-top views of
stretches of white-sand beaches.
Catarina’s
contact with Réné, her former partner, also leaves one wondering, and the
feeling of isolation is reinforced when she’s seen in desolate landscapes (such
as the isolated spit of land where a lighthouse sits), crying out “Is anyone
there?” Then, rather pathetically, she asks that if someone really is there
that they email her. Her one contented moment is a scene of her masturbating,
and one wonders who she might be thinking about then. She’s smiling but her
eyes are closed.
Ironically, the
“slits” or “cracks” of the title (fendas in Portuguese) refer to the
eyes, openings to the visualized world outside, to the light-revealed exterior.
The visual is also closely linked to the mental processes that perceive
spatially - and also abstractly. But it’s the auditory that’s more related to
the body, to the rhythms of music, dance, and intimate movement.
Much as we
humans long for unity, and many physicists have been searching for years for a
Grand Unifying Theory of the Whole Enchilada, the idea that sound and image are
interchangeable seems a profound mistake. Catarina apparently recognizes this
at the end, a revelation for both her and for viewers. (Perhaps she can now
work on getting another cat.) In the meantime, Segundo is to be commended for
serving up a memorable vision of the frayed interfaces between mind and heart,
time and space, sight and sound.
Photos
provided by Fendas
distributors. The film arrives in French cinemas Aug. 4.
Dimitri
Keramitas is a writer and legal expert based in Paris.
