Hungarian female director Ildikó enyedi won the Golden Camera Award at Cannes for her debut film as early as the 1980s, but has not had a film since the 1990s when she switched to television, and it was not until this year that the new work was shortlisted for the main competition unit in Berlin to return to the big screen again, so "Meat and Spirit" was also expected in the film list of this year's film festival.
Written by Irtiko himself, the script for Flesh and Spirit tells a surreal love story. Ender, who has a left hand disability, works as a financial director at a slaughterhouse, handles chores on weekdays, and has few friends around him. Ender was reluctant to change the life of eating alone and living alone until Maria, the new quality inspector at the slaughterhouse, appeared. Maria is a more withdrawn girl, with not only interpersonal communication disorders, but also obsessive-compulsive disorder, but this does not prevent Ender's attention to the girl with light blond hair. Soon we discover that there is a secret connection between Ender and Maria—they dream the same thing every night. Iltico uses two unique characters, mixing dreams, soul and physical imaginations, to merge into a wonderful story, a pair of men and women with personality disorders through the mysterious way of dreams, before the body finds each other, the soul has been acquainted.
How does a pair of souls who know each other and attract each other overcome various obstacles in real life and bring the body closer? Such an inverse thinking angle is very interesting. It breaks the hormonal theory and the old terrier of love at first sight to deduce a grotesque, gentle and cruel love story.
The characters Iltiko set up in the dream of the male and female protagonists are very special, they are the two deer that appear in the snowy jungle at the beginning of the film. The two appear in the dream from the perspective of a male and female deer, sharing each other's dreams every day. In addition to the portrayal of the male and female protagonists in the film, the animals under the lens are the most wonderful, and I don't know how Irtico dispatched the camera and animal actors to make the two deer and the cows to be slaughtered seem to be spiritual, and the emotions and emotions exuded from the animals are easier to resonate with the audience than those revealed by humans.
The silent communication between animals is also speechless, and there are countless misunderstandings and barriers between people and people because of words and body language. The two people who are most incompatible with human society, on the contrary, are like naked children, approaching carefully with animal-like intuition and sensitivity, testing each other, once they touch the boundary, they can escape like animals, and then they will test and get closer. This incomparably long and delicate process is mixed with cruel shots such as slaughter and dismemberment that suddenly appear inadvertently into a cruel and romantic poetry. Although the scenes such as slaughtering and dismemberment are very uncomfortable, the director's gentle touch of the soul and the cruel calmness of the body effectively strip the two apart, presenting this theme that has been touched upon by countless creators from a very unique perspective.
The first half of the film is somewhat long, and the director portrays the characters too carefully, such as using the feet standing along the light and shadow line, the water cup placed along the edge line of the table to explain Maria's obsessive-compulsive disorder, the use of seasoning bottles and doll simulation dialogue to show Maria's understanding and temptation of communication, and the cross-editing of the same thing from beginning to end. After all these long details, the film enters a good state in the last paragraph. Maria cut her wrists because of Ender's refusal, and was redeemed by a phone call from Ender, after which the two had sex, the whole process was only animal-like panting, the two slept in each other but no longer dreamed, and there was no longer a trace of two deer in the white snow. Spirit and flesh are finally fused into one in blood and intimate contact, completing the process of finding the body from the soul in the director's intention.
["Flesh and Spirit" Hungarian trailer, the right should be seen to understand the picture :)]
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Film critic in France, has been invited to serve as a special film critic for three major international film festivals for many domestic portals.