LAS COSAS INDEFINIDAS

With Sobre las nubes (FID 2022), Maria Aparicio offered us a gentle, melancholic drift through lonely, dull lives, to the slow rhythm of the clouds in the title. Las cosas indefinidas, like an additional chapter, focuses on Eva, film editor, and her discussions with her assistant Rami. Together, they are editing a film about blind people, which was begun by a friend who, as we learn at the start of the movie, has just died. Attentive and precise, Maria Aparicio's camera follows Eva, with fixed frames watchful of the slightest bodily movement, the slightest hesitation, the most tenuous silence, or allowing the spoken word to unfold before the camera, as in the monologue that is, in a way, addressed to her. This, like Eva's attention to the images in her friend's film, is about taking care of everyone: the faces, the words heard, the people. Images and films seem to provide shelter for this care. However, this kind of reception is ambivalent, as the bouquets to which Eva attaches so much importance suggest – not only do the flowers bring back memories but they also remind us that her friend is gone. Between perspective and impression, memory and loss, the film sets out to create a movement from the inside out. This is a delicate ode to the attention paid to people doing undefined things, to use the expression borrowed from Robert Bresson that gives the film its title. (Nicolas Feodoroff)