La cicatrice intérieure (The Inner Scar, 1972) by Philippe Garrel @ Brattle
Presented on 35mm by Balagan film series
Tuesday, 10/1, 7:30pm
Philippe Garrel survived heroin addiction, depression, electroshock therapy, and a 10-year-long affair with Nico. Either explicitly or obliquely, their tumultuous relationship has been the subject of nearly all films he has directed since the early 1970s, La cicatrice intérieure (The Inner Scar) being the first and arguably the best of their 7 collaborative efforts. Shot in desolate exotic locales – deserts of Egypt and New Mexico, grottos of Italy, and glaciers and geysers of Iceland, this underground epic starts out with the austerity of an evangelical tale and progresses toward the grandiosity of a Wagnerian opera. The ostensible impenetrability of the plot is counterbalanced by three tightly imbricated forces: possessed performances by the actors, captured in spectacular long takes; precise framing and choreographically elaborate tracking shots; and the lacerating songs by Nico herself, from her album “Desertshore”, which ensure that the film not only looks but also sounds prehistoric and post-apocalyptic at the same time. Perhaps a story of doomed love, La cicatrice intérieure is, nevertheless, not about chemistry, or lack thereof, between its archetypal characters but, rather, about illicit chemical substances shared among them, as well as the alchemy of basic elements: earth, fire, water and air.
-Dmitry Martov