17'
Portuguese
Portugal
“Eyes, Eyes, Nose, Mouth” emerges from an ongoing search around intimacy and memory themes that run through all my work. It seeks to fulfill a long-held desire to contaminate the artistic process itself, embracing the other as an integral part of creation and, simultaneously, of the construction of identity, the very subject this film explores.
The film aims to [...]
“Eyes, Eyes, Nose, Mouth” emerges from an ongoing search around intimacy and memory themes that run through all my work. It seeks to fulfill a long-held desire to contaminate the artistic process itself, embracing the other as an integral part of creation and, simultaneously, of the construction of identity, the very subject this film explores.
The film aims to explore dichotomies and to illustrate paradoxical realities that nonetheless coexist. It moves from the intimate to the public, from the individual to the collective, from the feminine to the masculine.
Drawing from the coming-of-age genre, it alludes to the epic nature of a journey and to a dreamlike empiricism, relating above all to femininity and to the process of growing into womanhood.
We follow the POV of a nameless GIRL, a teenager who sneaks out of her house to go to a party and meet a BOY. The GIRL arrives at the party and feels increasingly out of place until she finally encounters the BOY she was supposed to meet. But the BOY claims he doesn’t even remember her. Then arises the doubt: is he pretending? Or does he truly not remember her? Is she losing her mind? She doesn’t even remember her own name. What, after all, is memory?
This obstacle in communication serves as an illustration of the pain and uncertainty inherent in growing up as well as the confrontation between differing perspectives and the tension that arises when our perception of reality collides with that of others. Time becomes inverted and distorted; images grow increasingly diffuse and accelerated, evoking the fragmentation of the timeline, a clear homage to Alain Resnais’s “Last Year at Marienbad.”
The film also references Chekhov’s short story “A Joke”, in which Nadienka, like the GIRL, begins to question her perception of reality, and the BOY, much like the story’s narrator, plays a game that is both innocent and cruel. “Eyes, Eyes, Nose, Mouth” draws from these references only to subvert them. The party becomes progressively more surreal, culminating in a body and role exchange achieved through a cinematic trick. The BOY and the GIRL switch bodies and positions. At dawn, the BOY awakens, literally and metaphorically, to find himself displaced, in the home of a GIRL who does not remember him or pretends not to.
This moment alludes to the possibility of illustrating exchange and transformation. Cinema frees us from the apparent linearity of time giving space to time, and time to space. The film’s eclecticism also stems from this homage to cinema as a synesthetic medium par excellence: the experimental merges with the naturalistic; the literary tone intertwines with more colloquial dialogue, bringing humanity to this exploration an eternal search for the self in the other, and for the other in the self.
As its title suggests, “Eyes, Eyes, Nose, Mouth” is deeply sensorial. What lies upon the face? Stylized characters serve as visual clues, within a strong graphic language: blue emerges as a non-physical character, a light representing a new sensation, a different reality, open to possibilities of branching or fusion. The apple appears as a symbol of the forbidden fruit, of birth, and of the inevitable ambiguity of adolescence.
Is intimacy always mutual? The film challenges this very idea. There are no static concepts. How often do we believe we know someone, only to realize we never truly did? At minute 12:38, when the faces of the BOY and the GIRL merge as do the sounds and the words “Dois” and “Duas”, in their masculine and feminine forms we lose track of who is who. Only through self-discovery, and through external stimuli arising from relationships, can symbiosis be found and the other be understood. Yet, on the other side of the coin, it is through excessive and literal fusion that relationships break.
By questioning relational metaphors, this film gives eyes and mouths to abstract concepts. The secret, the playfulness, and the game itself become increasingly evident. Memory, too, is superimposition and confusion here referencing Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished film “L’Enfer”, which was to have explored precisely these themes of relational disconnection and perceptual dissonance.
Above all, “Eyes, Eyes, Nose, Mouth” seeks to underline the theme of gender equality through the subversion of clichés. It speaks of the difficulties inherent in the female condition so often represented as prone to hysteria or exaggeration. The word “hysteria”, medically speaking, does not apply to men: a man cannot be hysterical a woman can. How does this perception of femininity affect a woman’s self-worth and her view of the world? And, in the mirror’s reversal, what about masculinity?
What if women were looked at the way men look at them? And what if women looked at men the way men look at them? This film enables that exchange, giving voice and body through the GIRL to women who feel they have no space to express themselves within heteronormative relationships.
This film is a cry.
Or two.
English
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