In the enclosed space of a compartment on a train headed for Siberia, a couple has
willingly closeted themselves. Joana Preiss, actress, and the filmmaker Bruno
Dumont. In order to invent an outside, or who knows?, to fold back up perhaps once
more into the intimacy of a couple-in-love within itself; here we have the two lovers
split-in-two as they film each other: each one armed with a small camera, each one
pressing the other to enter into his or her frame. It’s anything but idyllic: the relation
with the image, the relationship with the loved one (is it so different?) is negotiated,
is disputed, is thought about aloud rather than building the pretty and fraudulent
script of happiness. It is thus a mosaic still very disconnected that is presented here,
in complete contrast with the extensive monochrome of snow-covered landscapes
glimpsed from the train window. Between the nights of some stopovers spent
outside in the Russian countryside, an indistinct sidewalk, an uncertain hotel, a
depressing dance hall, and those that the interior lights of the train illuminate with
its pale light, it is a unique temporality that intends to be transmitted here. One that
mingles life and work, one that confuses acting and directing with the stupor of the
intoxication of uncalculated gestures, one that no longer distinguishes between
passion and cold observation, between feelings and their pantomime. An icy dream
whose slow melting we here watch. (JPR)