Tag: photograph

Photograph

Posted on by victorfraga

The titular photograph of Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) is the thread connecting the episodic narrative. It is taken by Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) a freelance photographer, eking out a living by taking pictures of tourists at the attraction of the Gateway. Against all the odds and despite the difference in age, background and education, they develop a strong connection.

Said photograph, which is never seen clearly, appears to transform Miloni into an image of beauty. Otherwise, she appears a self-effacing young woman devoted to her studies. Her willingness to go along with her family’s wishes is illustrated by her mother choosing the colour of the dress which suits her best. By volunteering the photograph taken by Rafi, she is compliant in responding to her parents plan to arrange an introduction to a suitable match for her. Despite her own interest in becoming an actress, she studies accountancy at college.

In contrast to the comfortable home where Miloni lives with her parents and sisters, Rafi shares one room in a multi-occupied building with a convivial group of friends and fellow photographers. They and others of Rafi’s acquaintance make much of the fact that his grandmother, living in his home village at a considerable distance (three days journey by train) wants to see him married. He has provided a dowry for each of his sisters and sends money regularly to his grandmother leaving himself with no means of setting up home himself.

Left with extra copies of the photograph of Miloni, it occurs to Rafi to send a sample to his grandmother as proof that he has a girlfriend, not anticipating that this will result in his grandmother coming to see for herself. This sets off a chain of reactions which form the main body of the film. Miloni goes along with the deception and even creates a back story for herself as an orphan. The character of the grandmother (played by Farrukh Jaffar) motivated by the need to see her grandson married, is a an unusual portrayal of a woman in old age, well able to adapt to life in the big city.

Various encounters with taxi drivers, visits to the cinema, a meeting with prospective husband (whose aim in life is to get away from his parents) expand our understanding of the characters of the couple. Miloni with the awareness of Rafi waiting in the background manages effectively to get away from her unpleasantly assertive college lecturer. She benefits from advice from the more worldly-wise maid within her parents household.

Despite the differences in background, Rafi and Miloni each have stories which demonstrate their strong attachment to their grandparents. Little is said but they manage to meet up quite successfully and spend time together. The specially composed music supports the screen images, often creating a melancholy but intimate atmosphere. Who knows how their friendship will progress but each appears to have a deepening understanding of their importance to each other.

Photograph is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 2nd.

Daguerrotype (Le Secret de la Chambre Noire)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

In a large house in a rural French town, contemporary photographer Stéphane (Olivier Gourmet) employs 19th century daguerreotype photographic plate techniques involving lengthy exposures. (The “chambre noire” of the title is the French term for both “darkroom” and “camera obscura”.) Subjects must remain utterly motionless for 20 minutes at a time in order for their image to be captured without becoming blurred. Stéphane attaches his models to metal rigs designed to hold them in place for the duration, an experience both uncomfortable and sometimes painful for them. He makes a living from fashion shoots set up by his colleague Vincent (Mathieu Amalric).

In between paid gigs, Stéphane obsessively photographs on a larger plate camera life-sized images of his 22-year-old daughter Marie (Constance Rousseau) just as while she was still alive he previously lensed his late wife Denise (Valérie Sibilia). Exposing his daughter for longer and longer periods of time of around 60 minutes, he sometimes has her drink liquid compounds to help her keep still.

Marie is concerned that the mercury-laden chemicals required for her father’s work, spillages and seepages of which can kill vegetation, are stored near the greenhouse in which she’s grown rare plants since she was a child. She wants to study botany and gets accepted on a course in Toulouse. This would mean moving away from home. She’s deeply unhappy about the father-daughter relationship and her father’s new assistant Jean (Tahar Rahim), talking to estate agent Thomas (Malik Zidi), hatches a plan to convince Stéphane of Marie’s death so that he will sell the house at a low price enabling Jean and Marie to make a fast buck by reselling at market value. It’s the sort of plot from which Hitchcock or Chabrol might have made a terrific suspense thriller.

“He’s confused photography and reality for so long he can no longer tell the difference between the living and the dead”, Marie confides to Jean. A few minutes in, when neither Jean nor the audience have been introduced to Marie, he spots her as a silent apparition in a blue, nineteenth century dress moving slowly up a staircase to be briefly framed like a pictorial subject in the circular landing above. Have we just seen a ghost?

Occasional creaks, blackouts and apparitions recall classic ghost stories like The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) or The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963). There’s a scene when Marie emerges from a bedroom that recalls the a similar scene in Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and there are echoes in the father’s moulding his daughter into her departed mother which recall Obsession (Brian DePalma. 1976), itself a reworking of Vertigo. The heavily melancholic/ romantic score by Grégoire Hetzel, while light years away from Bernard Herrmann’s work for Vertigo and Obsession, has a similar effect.

However, those expecting a shocker like Kurosawa’s own Pulse/Kairo (2001) or Creepy (2016) are likely to be disappointed. Admittedly, an unexpected fall down some stairs proves as unnerving as anything in Pulse/Kairo and unsettling corridor lighting cues recall rival J-horror ghost outing Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002). Yet the film largely eschews J-horror shock tactics to deliver a far more meditative, languorous and fluid experience to dreamlike, ethereal effect – as you might expect from a film based around the slow processes of nineteenth century photography.

Despite the French cast, crew, locations and architecture, this feels every inch a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film with numerous echoes of his other, Japanese-shot work. Opening exteriors recall the house that opens Before We Vanish (2017) and in almost every scene, there’s a clean feel to the composition familiar from those other films. Away from his native Japan, Kurosawa has imposed his own unique visual sensibilities on French culture and come up with something at once recognisably French and at the same time strangely alien to that culture.

(A note on spelling: the photographic plate is referred to as a ‘Daguerreotype’ after its inventor Louis Daguerre, while the film’s title drops the second ‘e’, presumably to make the English title’s pronunciation easier for a popular audience.)

Daguerrotype is available to stream on all major VoD platforms, and is part of the Walk This Way collection. And don’t forget to check our interview with Kurosawa!