THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED
The RaptureIris’ first feature film Kaltenbäck, opens with a break, quick and sharp like the blow of a scalpel. Lydia (Hafsia Herzi), sparkling in her scarlet dress, is ready for her best friend’s birthday. She urges her companion who, head bowed, does not move from the bed on which he is sitting. She looks at him. He admits to infidelity. She chases him away. End of the story. Lydia goes to the party alone. Then, the next day, to the maternity ward where she exercises, with infinite gentleness, the profession of midwife. She moves forward, resumes her habits as if nothing had happened.
But, deep down, nothing is going well. Something is brewing, a threat that is not expressed but seeps through the details. The rupture which has just taken place, in reality, carries the germ of an explosion whose warning signs are inscribed in the looks, a stubborn silence, the position of the bodies and their place in space, a wandering in the Parisian night, the color of a piece of clothing, the atmosphere of a city… Iris Kaltenbäck’s first feature film will never proceed other than through this art of suggestion, this subtle and formal lighting which sows its clues , piles them up in successive layers. Which will, over time, charge the story and the characters with a rare and moving intensity.
The story told is therefore that of Lydia, a young woman without a family whose strength rests, essentially, on the friendship which, since childhood, has attached her to Salomé (Nina Meurisse), her chosen little sister. without which she cannot imagine living. For her part, Salomé is in a relationship, but still available for Lydia, her lifelong confidante. The first, logically, to whom she announced that day that she was expecting a child.
Postpartum depression
Shortly before, Lydia met Milos, an insomniac bus driver with whom, in a bar located at the terminus of her line, she spent a night talking. They plan to meet again, Lydia wants to believe it, envisages a future. He doesn’t. A new breakup, however, is thwarted, this time, by the intense happiness of a birth. Salomé’s delivery takes place under Lydia’s supervision. The child appears, and it is a delight. Which, at the very moment it happens, begins its opposite movement: a dizzying fall whose outcome will fully justify the title.
The rest, we will summarize it in a few facts. Returning home, Salomé, subject to postpartum depression, accepts Lydia’s eager help, entrusting Lydia with the baby as often as she wants. It is thus, with the baby in her arms, that the faithful friend meets Milos again in an elevator. He believes in mother and child. She doesn’t dare contradict him. He who had only passed by, returns, wonders. Lydia gives in, makes people believe that the child is his. Against all odds, Milos gets involved, gets attached, asks to see them more often. Lydia sinks deeper into lies, juggles, takes more and more risks to prolong the illusion, this semblance of a family to which she has no right. Until committing the irremediable.
You have 27.13% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.