Piaffe

Eva (Simone Bucio) is not a Foley artist. But her sibling Zara (Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau) is, so when they have a breakdown before completing their work for director Piotr (Bjørn Melhus), it’s up to Eva to complete Zara’s work. They were working on a commercial for a depression medication which involves horses. Eva gets Piotr his sounds, but he admonishes her with “A machine made this. I need a human…Do it right or you’re fired.” So she scampers out, tail between her legs, to throw herself into the task. After no time at all, she begins to understand horses in a way she never expected…

One of the things I admire most about this film is its commitment to taking its time. It’s barely 80 minutes long (before credits), and yet it still finds the time to sit in scenes, to let them play out as they need to in order to drive home their dreamlike quality. We really get a sense of place and of the characters despite the minimal dialog. They feel like they have relationships before ever directly addressing each other.

It’s kinda neat to see a movie where a Foley artist is the protagonist, since even movies about making movies rarely involve them. Eva might not be one by training, but we see the process by which she goes about her work, repeating the creation of the sounds for individual snippets of film over and over again, refining them over time. If you’ve ever see a Foley artist’s work space, be it in real life or in a video, you’ll recognize the mess of boxes on the floor containing various materials with which to experiment. Although it’s her research which makes for a more compelling watch. She becomes incredibly sensitive to how things feel and the resulting noises they make, as if she’s building up an internal catalog to allow her to better layer elements into a single collage. And in turn, we see her apply those learnings as she obsessively tries to get it right.

Given the ethereal aesthetic and all-consuming nature of the task, it’s easy to accept it causing her to sprout a horse tail. But a lot of what they do with that seems weird for the sake of weird. Almost every aspect of her trysts with Dr. Novak (Sebastian Rudolph) seems arbitrary, from the rose to the dance to the strangling. Her fascination with him is natural enough, as he comes into the place she works in order to watch continually rotating images of plants unfurling and take notes. But the encounters themselves make little sense. I get the implication that the emergence of her tail makes this timid, meek woman more confident. But why? What aspect of that makes her think someone else not only would be attracted to it, but wouldn’t find it horrifying? From the very moment she discovers the nub protruding from her lower back, she’s cool with it, which nothing else in the movie prepares you for.

The subplot with visiting Zara at the hospital makes similarly little sense. Why is Zara acting out, why do they eventually demand the nurse let Eva in, and why do they throw strawberries at her for her read of the ad? Again, I think it’s supposed to be a confidence thing, but the connection is never drawn, so it plays out as a random series of scenes that add up to…another incredibly strange and inexplicable scene at the end.

The choice of a female name for Eva’s sibling, someone who presents male and is referred to by gender-neutral pronouns, as well as the movie’s summary, implies this is supposed to in part be commenting on the artifice of gender and sexuality. To be honest, I don’t really see it, which may be a big part of why this movie didn’t work for me. Sure, the unorthodox nature of Eva’s relationship with Dr. Novak plays with the irregular nature of sexual expression, and how the physical act of intercourse isn’t necessary for someone to achieve orgasm. But the only way I can grasp the gender exploration in her transformation is through the idea of people’s immediate acceptance of her, with no one questioning it. Although there is fetishization of her new physicality, coming both from Dr. Novak as well as a random dude at the club. I dunno, seems weak.

The sound design was fantastic, as you might expect. This is one of the few times I’m glad to have watched a movie with headphones on, to ensure I could more easily catch every single element in the audio track. There were so many subtle sounds helping to tell the story, which was super satisfying. On a purely taste level, I greatly enjoyed the driving electronic/industrial music in the club scenes.

All of this and more combined to make Piaffe feel like a student film. It’s a simple movie that plays at having deeper and more abstract themes, all the while presenting them in incredibly blunt and obvious ways (the amount of horseshoes I saw…). There are an absurd number of shots which serve to make the film feel more “artsy” while adding nothing, such as layering a blown out red filter over the image for a brief second. And the weirdness doesn’t appear to have any goal except to make people take notice.

So what we’re left with is a mostly boring skeleton of a film, which takes a solid idea but refuses to really do anything with it. Some of the absurdity is pretty funny, but it’s trying to be a serious art film, so there’s little room for much of it. It feels more like a director trying to get noticed than actually having something to say or an interesting way to say it, leading to the bloat which highlights the problems I’ve been talking about. Unfortunately, looks like it worked. But alas, at least it’s far from the most cynical version of that. Looking at you, Rhys Frake-Waterfield.