OPEN HAUS: “GRRL HAUS CINEMA” TAKES OVER THE BRATTLE ONCE AGAIN
…According to the descriptions accompanying each short, they’re both riffs on oft-told tales. Bluebeard [2016] employs the spectre of the spouse-murdering pirate to haunt over a more traditional instance of domestic strife. And the synopsis of Battalion to My Beat [2016] positions the work as a retelling of the Joan of Arc narrative, staged in a “safe zone” outside Moroccan control on the border of Algeria. These allusions are indeed apparent in the films themselves. But each work is also directed with startling clarity—is marked by an attention to physical texture and verbal nuance—is visualized with extremely specific perspectives—and all that so much so that you forget about the origins as soon as you meet each movie. Bluebeard, which is directed by the Brooklyn-based team of Rachel Garber Cole and Kimberlee Venable, finds its own identity in the literal gaps that expand between its central couple. An opening sequence at a dinner party features rapid edits between food and faces, suggesting a level of intimacy that’ll dissapear soon afterwards. When the hosting couple retreats to the restroom, a seemingly mundane secret is revealed—and from that moment, the distance between the pair increases exponentially. They’re in separate rooms, even when they’re in the same shot; their faces are turned away from each other when they are nearby; their previously-symmetrical sleeping positions are thrown ajar. It’s not the familiar story that’s keeping your eye’s attention—it’s the space instead…