I have a peculiar habit which makes it difficult to watch movies at home in my company: I pause the movie whenever I miss a word (a single word being of so much importance to me that I fear, by losing it, I might miss the meaning of the film, or a fragment of poetry at least). I also pause to capture stills and collect them, a way of appreciating the photography of the movie, the eye of the director, the attention to framing and contexts. Out of these still sometimes paintings emerge. Sometime technological aberrations.
These stills are from the film ‘Murderous Maids’ (Les Blessures Assassines) . When I pasted the captured image, horizontal lines were formed, adding to the frailty of the character. In the stills the red hat becomes a faded rose petal, an accent of vermillion in an Old Master’s painting…I am thinking Vermeer, Northern Impressionism, malancholy light.
The theme of stairs in literature and film is one worthy of investigation. Here stairs are not only architectural elements, but, I believe, symbolic of the undercurrents of this film. I can never really stay away from Architecture, can I ?
Here are some quotes from ‘Murderous Maids’; ponder a while:
Lea: If we were rich…
Christine: What would change? Rich ladies have everything but I’ve seen them weeping in secret.
Christine: [to her sister Lea on her first of work] And always speak to them in third person. Aunt Isabelle said a master is three people. the one he is, the one others think he is and the one he believes he is. Always address the last one.
Interesting Fact: There is no music whatsoever in the movie, perhaps that is why the camera shots speak so loud, and why there is a nervous energy that pervades the movie, an obsessive attention to details passed on to the viewer in the heavy silences, in the pregnant pauses.
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