Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought
The film's opening caption informs us early on that the murder will not see justice: too many cases remain unsolved.
Loosely based on a true story.
A girl says goodbye after spending a pleasant evening at a friend's house.
And beautiful Clara, attractive and full of life, and on her way to her home records and sends a video full of affection for her friend.
A hooded person waits for her, throws flammable liquid at her and sets her on fire.
Clara runs but will be found burned in a nearby park the next day. The parents knew that the girl would stay over at her friend's and are alerted by the police to the dramatic news.
The investigation begins; there are 6 suspects, including friends, boyfriend, lovers and exes.
But we already know that the perpetrator will not be found, and so attention turns elsewhere, to what we often look away from: the focus is on environment, culture, context, language, stereotype.
All this through the stages of inquiry each time focused on completely different figures from each other: from the violent, to the rapper who in one song threatens to burn her, to the idiot "fucker" who laughs all the time but does not accept her being called "easy," as to him she is simply an uncomplicated girl.
Domenik Moll focuses attention on the look of the respondent, the judge, and those, including the media, who interpret and judge.
However, the case gets under the skin of the investigators, especially Yohan for whom it becomes an obsession.
Not understanding, not being able to find and see the truth, feeling bewilderment in the face of an increasingly incomprehensible reality, like realizing and finally taking note that "there is something wrong between men and women."
Jealousy may be a motive, having many boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, lovers may be the cause, that of "having gone for it."
It is this double-look that triggers Moll, that of being able to see where there is prejudice against a woman, as the terminology and language addressed to a man killed under the same conditions and assumptions would surely be different.
A human universe where men commit the crimes and always men have to solve them; a human universe where women are killed because the world is incapable of understanding them and accommodating their changes: a human universe where the war between male and female prevails over any dialogue.
A cross-cultural, human and inhuman subculture; a patriarchal masculine and often feminine language that is unable to accommodate a free, uncomplicated or complicated, easy and difficult, new and different woman.
A film seemingly normal yet so different, simple yet complex, banal yet sophisticated in pointing the finger and paying attention to the toxic culture that sees the emancipated feminine even if only sexually as the outpost to be resisted as it is preparatory to independence from the male.
The culprit is not found because the responsibility is transversal and pervasive, structured on intrusive cultural legacies.The director's eye is focused on shifting the gaze from the judicial inquiry to focus on prejudice and indifferent but violent and criminal everyday language.
A young woman, beautiful, attractive, free and joyful is annoying to everyone because she is outside the expected and predictable canons, because she is chaotic and indefinable due to a cultural and therefore political decision formed slowly, deeply rooted and extraordinarily persuasive even today.
Moll therefore does not hesitate to investigate society wrapped in a predominantly male dialectic, where the synthesis is never the result of a dialogue between thesis and antithesis, but a self-referential, apodictic, autistic and violent discourse.
The film starts from a news event to construct a metachronic reflection, it starts from an event to make it an instrument of metaculture.
The most effective way to defeat patriarchy is to challenge and disavow its self-validating narrative
23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice