Thursday, February 18, 2021

No Trace (2021) Slamdance 2021

This is the story  of dystopian world and a woman who travels across the land via a railcar.

This is a dark and brooding tale where not a great deal is explained. Told with beautiful black and white cinematography where the size and orientation of the images changes. There are long wordless passages where we are left to ponder what it all means.

While this is a beautiful film, one I wish I had seen n a big screen, it is also one that many people are going to walk away from. You have to be willing to go with the enigma of it all and be willing to deal with the long "meaningful" silences. 

For me this was a tough slog. While it looks great it is way too enigmatic. Enigmatic isn't in and of itself bad but for it to work you need to give the audience enough threads hang on to. We need to have a sense of a world on the screen. We need to feel we can step into the world and understand it.

Sadly there aren't enough threads here. We have a few bits but details are lacking. We never connect. We never are part of it. While  director Simon Lavoie has made a beautiful film. he has also made a film that we are always outside of. 

A miss.

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