There is a reigning quality of mystery in Erpe-Mere, the debut film by Noemi Osselaer. The mystery of a Belgian municipality, whose title the film bears, and of which I know nothing, unfolds through a perceptual net where the contrast between day and night widens the eyes. There is, therefore, this departure day that embraces straight, well-framed shots, where actions, sometimes laborious, sometimes induced or fortuitous, take place, countered by a night full of visions. That night welcomes several focal points: a flashlight, a depicted sleep, an artificial backlight effect, animal gazes rendered incandescent by the camera. The mysterious quality of Erpe-Mere also becomes strangely analytical through the blending of subjective and objective perspectives intertwined by the film. We are there as much through the lens of a subjective camera as suddenly removed from this subjective view, displaced into shots showing the places where our vision was situated. Thus, a bike-mounted camera swallowing a small road, thus, this perspective that makes the entrance of a small barn strange, its darkness engulfing and hollowing us. Thus, the flickers that bring us back to the surface of the image, thus, the animal gaze that reminds us of the idea that seeing is a constant decentering.

 

Maude Trottier
Editor-in-Chief, Hors champ magazine