QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

In 1919, an inherited manor, a vampiric lady and a silent film director only scratch the surface of Latvian director Signe Birkova’s feature debut, Lotus. Lithuanian actress Severija Janušauskaitė plays Alice von Trotta, a silent film director who befriends the vampiric Madam Falstaff. Unbeknownst to Alice, Falstaff has ulterior motives. She wants to use Alice’s filmmaking know-how to create a propaganda film. Attempting to make the film, Alice encounters push back from the industry and is censored.

Any synopsis for Latvian director Signe Birkova’s feature debut, Lotus, will mislead. It’s not a film you can articulately describe, because it doesn’t want to be understood to that degree. It’s undoubtedly a challenging film, and on some level it’s a contradiction. On the one hand it’s difficult to comprehend it’s a first feature given its fragmented form, and yet, it’s not surprising because its form will be seen as a narrative mess, by an ill-qualified director. It’s all a matter of point of view, because whether you love it or hate it, or even feel discombobulated, it’s a strong embodiment of arthouse cinema.

There are those films that hinge on coherent understanding, but Lotus is not one of them. Birkova wants to drag us down into uncertainty and expose the vulnerability of our critical thinking by challenging our pre-suppositions. This is the modus operandi of certain extreme art house films (in my opinion), and for audiences can let go of the need for clarity, a film such as Lotus can be a cathartic experience.

Lotus is like a dream or memory – personal to the individual. In this way, the film functions on a dream or nightmare logic. The construction mimics the chaos and fragmented nature of dreams, and just as we can’t always remember a dream, so too does a hazy fog descend over Lotus.

The importance of a film like Lotus cannot be overstated. In a time when questions are being asked about the future of cinema and the seemingly existential crisis with cinema no longer being the dominant art form, Birkova finds herself in direct conversation with this commentary. These questions interrogate what cinema is and what it can be? It’s important that films experiment with the form, which Lotus does. This allows us to understand any possible limitations in expanding the cinematic boundaries. Birkova’s film reminds us that we are a crippling limitation. It’s the human perspective or unconscious bias that can hold cinema back because we’ve turned it into a narrative art form. Films like Lotus play around with narrative, constructing, breaking or even omitting narrative.

In the specific case of Lotus, Birkova creates a fragmented narrative storm, that contradicts itself. There are moments in the film where these narratives make sense, but in the hands of Birkova, narrative logic is not permanent.

This is a film that cannot be fully understood or appreciated on a single viewing. The fragmented narrative is populated with details that are either missed or hidden behind others, and for those arthouse aficionados, repeat viewings will yield rewarding insights into this enigmatic work.

Lotus just premiered in the First Feature Competition of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.