A film can only present the surface of
the the things the people or the landscape captured by the cinematic
recording apparatus. In this film we have a a relationship in a
fragmented family. Catherine, a young mother returns after 10 years
from Switzerland to Luxembourg. She has not seen her daughter Alba
for 10 years. The child has raised by her grandmother Elisabeth
(played by the wonderful Isabelle Huppert) who is also her tennis
coach. The alienation between these three persons seems to be
insuperable. The separation of these three has created a new reality,
the reality the one of a shattered family. At the beginning Catherine
tries to her daughter again and at the beginning it is as useless
like to run with the head against a wall. Despite the alienation
there is s strange physical resemblance, if in gesture, costume
design or whatever. Something which makes me believe that these
people have shared a life which was interrupted for 10 years. The
past, Catherine´s relationship to her mother (who also once was her
tennis coach), her mental problems in the past and even her reason to
leave her country and her family are not really explained but implied
through small hints. Exactly here happens something with the film.
The given reality of this relationships and as well the given reality
of this precise apparatus who records this reality is undercut by the
incalculable factor of human feelings, longings, the rebellion
against the world like it is. Like Ozu, Laura Schroeder simulates
with her fiction a piece of reality. But this reality is hard to bear
for her protagonists and if they can´t change this reality, the only
thing they can do is to get ideas about what put them into this
merciless reality.
There is a contradiction in this film
which we and the protagonists have to bear, the world like it is and
how it could be. This “how it could be” is revealed only in small
heartbreaking fleeting moments like a dance of mother and daughter in
the landscape. The biggest part of the film takes place in a vacation
home on a river and near a forest, an engrossed place where the
reality of these persons are not totally suspended but where it can
be questioned. This environment is beautiful but there are hidden
dangers, especially for a child. The material visible landscape and
the indefinable invisible human landscape, we can neither see nor
feel but imagine. This summer cottage with it´s environment is also
an analogy to cinema itself and probably of it´s most subversive
power.
Catherine has a cute little dog who is
hit by a car when Alba tries to run away from her mother. They bury
the animal in a forest. It is one of these strange moving moments in
this film. It was this small animal which neither does know nor
accept any “Barrages” from what the film is telling all the time.
The title “Barrage” suggests
several options to find access to the film, the barriers between the
characters but also as something man made which precludes the persons
to come close to each other like they once were. The more the film
proceeds Catherine´s relationship to her mother and the one between
her mother and herself are reflected in each other. Present actions
reveal for moments the past of the protagonists.
The cautious, sometimes even
affectionate but always precise view of this fragmented and framed
piece of world it reveals, a film can be nevertheless very intense,
even moving. The depth of the characters like for example in Barrage
unfolds as if by itself and this fragment of the world makes the
whole world at least imaginable.
At the end everything remains in it´s
status quo like it was at the beginning. The grandmother takes Alba
back to her home and seemingly Catherine accept it. If mother and
daughter will coming closer to each other – the film does not tell
anymore. It is an acceptance of the things like they are but with a
slight trace of hope for a change. This excursion into this summer
cottage does not make Catherine or Alba happier than they are and it
does not compensate for a life they have not lived, neither
compensate it for their losses. Yet the film closes with this small
idea of a change which I will describe with Marcel Proust: “We
don´t succeed in being happy but we reach insights about the reasons
who prevent us to be happy.” It is not only a good thought for
this wise and beautiful film, it is also one good description for the
meaning of cinema.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Screenings:
11.02, Cubix 9, 22.15
13.02,Arsenal 1, 12.15
17.02, Cinestar 8, 11.00
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