Source: MIFF.com.au
Directed by Argentinian talent Matías Piñeiro, the story follows the nymphs Britomartis (3000 BCE) and Sappho (620–570 BCE) as they navigate the complexities of human desire. The film is an adaptation of Cesare Pavese’s ‘Sea Foam’ and the poems of Sappho. Despite living in separate time periods, both women fall victim to the desire of men.
In the film, Britomartis is reincarnated in the body of a young biology student who strikes up an affair with an older woman who Sappho has morphed into. Britomartis, the Greek goddess of mountains and hunting, has come down to the ocean to visit our forgotten poet and ask her questions. Tu me abrasas, which translates to ‘you burn me’, is echoed throughout the film.
The film is like an ancient jigsaw puzzle. With the storyline shown in fragments, viewers cannot put the pieces together until they’ve watched the entirety of the 60-minute film. Pineiro delves into something delicate here. It looks at the ways love can be tormenting and soul extracting. The fate of these two women is just an example of how this could all play out.
The film shows that despite their histories being unretrievable, the memory of these women will never be erased. Pineiro does these women justice by acknowledging their pain. He delivers his promise to uphold their memory by crafting still movements with melancholic undertones. With this interaction initially imagined by Pavese, Pineiro only uses it as inspiration to honour the memory of these two women.
