Although there is no competitive section officially dedicated to them, Ecofilms International Films & Visual Art Festival held this year in Rhodes, Greece for the 6th time, features some shorts that have an outstanding aesthetic interest, even if not related to ecology.
Kitchen (25’), the first film directed by young screenwriter Alice Winocour, a graduate from FEMIS, the best film school in France, is definitely one of them.

In this short, a woman (Elina Lowensöhn) tries to cook two lobsters for her husband (Bernard Nissile), a plain situation that turns out to reveal a lot about their inner state and their relationship.

Both protagonists of the story are ambiguous in their own way.
The husband has kind gestures and a protective attitude toward his wife, but he doesn’t seem to listen to her. He’d rather have a caring housewife to protect than an independent spouse to love.
As for her, the main character of the short, she radiates through her face something between boredom and sorrow when on her own. Her foreign and charming accent subliminally brings distance between them. However, a chilling violence transpires from her attitude toward the lobsters she’s about to cook. Instead of following the sharp, technical and “acceptably” violent directions of the recipe, she tortures to death the living animals (of course, no lobster was mishandled on the set). Yet, she doesn’t take any pleasure from her attempts which are more desperate than barbaric. At the climax of the short, when she kills a lobster in a kitchen blender, the reaction shot on her face shows her disgust but also her resolve.
It’s not explicit in the short but the screenplay subtly implies that this violence is in fact directed to her husband. There is fortunately no plain symbolism expressing that (no castrating attitude, no attempt to cut something). Her attitude has more to do with getting rid of something, than with getting power over it.

The style of the shooting brilliantly balances the cold expression of the actress with her inner violence. All the scenes are shot with a fixed camera, which underlines the perfect composition of the frames, while a clever editing doesn’t make it look dull. Frames are organized around the geometry found in the place, like the tiling or the furniture, and their symmetry is always broken by an element that brings interest to the picture. All this mirrors the apparent control and calmness of the main character.
Occasional practical lighting with a lamp or a candle at the end gives warmth to this otherwise cold and geometrical setting. Only two scenes are shot with a moving camera. Shaky camera movements when the woman chases a lobster in the kitchen illustrate her growing violence and resolve. A more controlled and regular trolley movement in the end shows her having finally taken control over the situation, and probably her life, as she walks or flees alone at night in the streets of Paris.

Olivier Delesse



Full coverage of Ecofilms 2006 on filmfestivals.com :

Ecofilms kicks off in Rhodes, Greece
Ecofilms features this year some shorts with outstanding aesthetic qualities
Ecofilms opens with Echoes of War
Ecofilms rewards the short film Eco Dharma
Ecofilms pays a tribute to Jonas Mekas
Ecofilms awards its Golden Deers