Ciné-Club March: Hadewijch

Type: Event
City: Delhi
Date: Fri, 2012/03/30 – 5:30pm
Price: Free entry – Rights of admission reserved
Category: Film screening

HADEWIJCH

5.30 & 7.30 pm

Director : Bruno Dumont

2009, 105 min

At least we can’t say that this is a common movie. Indeed a movie that takes his name from a Flemish poet and mystic of the 13^th century and evokes the search for absolute of an adolescent girl nowadays, moving from the Christ to Islam, must be unique. Dumont marks him out, not only with his topic, but also with his elliptical style, sometimes particularly lightning.

At the beginning, his heroine, almost 20, is dismissed from a convent, because of her exaltation and her abstinence, disturbing the other sisters. So long Hadewijch (her pseudonym in the convent) and hello to Céline, a young Parisian girl, daughter of diplomat, living in a huge apartment in the Ile Saint Louis, but completely helpless, alone with her prayers. The movie will deal with her wandering and her excesses, always between grace and madness. She meets Yassine, a young man of the suburb, who introduces her to his big brother, a passionate Muslim, also totally devoted to his God.

The action of the movie goes through different classes and social backgrounds but Bruno Dumont is not a sociological director. No matter their environment, only count the power of evocation of images and the emotion they serve. Nevertheless  Hadewijch is less harsh and austere than the rest of Dumont’s filmography (Humanity, Flanders). Besides the use of music, the attention dedicated to his characters makes his very pictorial cinema (often tending towards metaphor), more organic and sensual. Though dealing with transcendence, Hadewijch follows a trajectory from skies to earth.