Eleonora's critical gaze from Croisette

(by Cannes Luigi Noira and Vittorio De Agrò (RS) with the kind collaboration of Eleonora Ono – the photos are published courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival)

The 64th week of critics never ceases to amaze with Reedland di Sven Besser, Dutch first work, in which silence and landscape are living metaphors

SdC Competition – Reed country (Reedland) di Sven Bresser

Plot: When the Johan cane taglier discovers the lifeless body of a girl on her land, is overwhelmed by an ambiguous need to trace evil. But darkness can thrive in unexpected places.

Review: The curtain opens with a huge grain field. The image is stopped, and it is immediately able to transmit rather distressing vibrations. In any case, It is perceived how the director has fun to tease the viewer by playing on the codes of the yellow noir, With a fantasy foggia, without neglecting various allusions of deep psychology.

The director therefore manages to instill the doubt, exploiting in the best way the geography in which the narration is set.

This incessant wind, that shakes the rods, It only increases the sense of restlessness. Among other things, there is a job on impeccable sound, since these continuous murmurs, This incessant pisyment, this whisper, gives the idea that the wind also wants to communicate something. Furthermore, The rustle of wheat becomes deafening as if it were a departure train. All this, it is undoubtedly misleading but terribly characteristic.

Sudden torrential rains, Aie deserts, forest fires, dense forests, black stone, Local legends of a hidden monster and a siren that curses its kidnappers, Sounds that tear silence: The television series "True Detective" is in the air, With slight hints Shyamalan and Lynch. All this, It contains Dutch hyperrealism embellished with a particularly meticulous staging of the director of photography Sam Dupuis. The work on the off the field, Very different shots with each other, plays of light.

Eg, The choice to focus on a black patch in the middle of the field emblematic, creating the optical illusion of a starry sky, But shortly after the image turns into two fingers that touch the stars. however, it is possible that the frame may vary again!

So, Here are many of the qualities that distinguish the director, including the relationship with silence, as an artist able to suggest a lot with very little.

History becomes even more curious, When Johan, Cane cutter, Discover the lifeless body of a girl on her land, His austere face crashes under the weight of an ambiguous guilt, more formulated, neither, nor, obvious. From there, The investigation that undertakes - among the reeds swept by the Venticello, rural assemblies, The tender care of the granddaughter - assumes the contours of a descent in daily evil, in that invisible sedimentation of errors, fears, Angties and silences that shape sin as a natural force, irreparable.

The roller proceeds its advancement with a sudden change of clips of daily life, also varying the chromatic palette: The school recitation with children disguised as hippos; The protagonist takes care of his Grise mare with affection, He deals with the eleven year old niece Dana;

The crazy sequence of the washing machine, which affects an alienating crack in the narrative consistency.

The plot is intense, dense, heavy and full of silences, which times, they are more deafening than urlo. After all, It is precisely in the quiet that the human being succeeds, If it is prepared, to reconnect with one's inner ego e, mostly, It is the exact instant in which it is possible to try to question introspectively about your experience.

Reedland is a movie to watch on the big screen, letting himself be carried away by the sound of nature

Eleonora Ono

Ndr: We hope that in the summer it will be selected in the Cannes@Rome event!