LE POINT AVEUGLE

In Les jardiniers du petit Paris (FID 2010), Sophie Roger already shared
her deep interest for landscapes and plants, at once delicate settings and
metaphors. Le point aveugle, filmed in the enclosed space of a garden in
Normandy, follows in the same vein.
By way of prologue, a woman in an ophthalmology practice, seen through a
machine turned into a pupil on screen, while searching for the blind spot,
this tiny part of the retina that cannot see. Is this a story about sight and a
missing image? Then, in the fantasy-tinged atmosphere of a garden: first
we catch a glimpse of a figure, a woman silently looking after her plants,
which are filmed close to their silky surface, then we see a gurunna head
being transplanted, seeds being collected, followed by the reproduction of
a double portrait by Pontormo, and an eye appearing behind a hole in a large
green leave. So many mysterious signs, spread one by one. After that come
glimpses of Chile, and a skull. The pieces are slowly put together and a
painting emerges. Images and feelings from here seem to echo with the
landscape from there.
Without a single word, with infinite modesty and delicacy, Le point aveugle
draws the halo of a story in which friendship and memory are like precious
possessions, requiring the most attentive care, as for this uprooted, fragile
plant. (NF)