Samantha Morrison on Phillippe Grandrieux’s White Epilepsy…
This shall not be a review in the traditional sense, as I did not see the entire film. I left out of sheer boredom after half an hour, and I was in fact the third person to do so. So, while I feel that I could not conscientiously review this film having not seen it in its entireity, I thought it necessary to publish my thoughts, so that the cinema-going general public are suitably warned as to the nature of the film.
The film was advertised in the EIFF brochure as follows:
“Based on an installation piece, this new work by a brilliant film artist jettisons narrative to immerse the viewer in a strange world of pure movement and gesture. Two bodies, male and female, move with unnatural slowness in dim light, engaging in an inexplicable and monstrous dance that is neither a battle nor love-making. An intensely hypnotic and beautiful work at the limit of cinema.”
I enjoy dance in general, and I decided that a foray into more experimental dance would be interesting; more like the kind of dance one would see in theatre, which I don’t often get to attend. Unfortunately, I missed subtle clues: ‘installation piece’, ‘jettisons narrative’ and ‘unnatural slowness’.
For the first ten minutes or so of the film, the footage was solely of a naked man’s back. His movements were so slight that he was essentially a statue, and the only sound was of heavy breathing. I felt the word ‘dance’ must have been an accident.
Then a woman was introduced, also completely naked. She walked around the man, for about seven minutes. Despite the lengthy amount of time, she only completed one circuit; the ‘unnatural slowness’ to which the blurb referred. The first audience member left.
During the next thirteen minutes, the man was on his hands and knees, while the woman writhed over him, looking quite uncomfortable, with the occasional thrust of the hips towards his ribcage. The second person left. Not only had there been barely any change in the actions of the protagonists (if they can be called so), there had also been no change in the lighting, background or sound. They were still lit to a shade of sickly paleness, amidst a pitch black background, to the sound of heavy breathing. I left.
This was the first film that I had been to see at this year’s festival, and I was bitterly disappointed. I had expected a couple of poor choices, but this was truly incredible in its dedication to being roundly and thoroughly dull.
If you do see it, I would love to read your comments about it, because a quick Twitter search shows my opinion is actually quite unpopular. Perhaps it ended ingeniously… Though personally, I believe that if a film chooses to bore its audience to tears for at least thirty minutes, no ending can redeem it.
Samantha Morrison
Originally published June 26, 2013. Updated April 10, 2018.
