”A child. A hangman. A whore.” It is filmmaker and researcher Mia Engberg new works, ”the Lucky one” in a concentrate. In all cases explains her narration. The voice also says explanatory: ”you were once young and loved, immaculate it would happen… It was I who loved you.”
the Duet is a middle-aged French man by the name of Vincent. The self is Engberg. Words are a bridge between the two cinematic worlds with six-year intervals.
already in ”Belleville baby” from 2013, one of my major, English movies in recent years. It is a autofiktiv hybridfilm, a documentary that blew out of the genre framework in a somewhat unforgettable way. A poetic, experimental, and personal works that shaped themselves into a journey that partly took place by telephone, to the memory of a great but complicated childhood sweetheart.
Engberg, portraying a passionate relationship that took its place in Belleville before gentrification cleaned away the most rough and multicultural in the parisian district. But also the couple’s different worlds, and the sharp breakup.
In ”the Lucky one”, a now worn-out Vincent up again. He is still only a voice, but his world is harder and more merciless than before. Mia Engberg playing this time with dokumentärgenrens most recurring questions (in all cases, at the audience): ”What happened then?” She reenacts simply a kind of response to ”Belleville baby” but this time even more of a purely fictitious drama.
The former fängelsekunden Vincent has passed through the lower world’s hierarchies. He has gone from violent skuldindrivare of the Italian mafia to the burned out and utrangerad driver for slaves from the east, which are sold to customers in the large luxury hotel at the Jardin des Tuileries. A young girl from the Ukraine pleading for his help.
”Lucky one”. Photo: Triart
, an abandoned 14-year-old with a small guldhamster named Lucky. In the midst of it all, he must suddenly take responsibility for someone else. He has left a heart, anyway?
”Lucky one” to further develop and refine the cinematic approach, Engberg calls this ”visual silence” in which people and documents are translated into a darkness or symbolic ‘ images.
Vincent is in front of all their eyes. He is the inside of a car, where the rain whips a nattmörk windshield. He is the walls in an anonymous hotel corridor all with gilt decorations. He is the empty Parisgatorna in a cold morning light. He is a victim and a perpetrator, love and betrayal, hope and despair. All at the same time.
”the Lucky one” begins as a tankelek, a savage fairy tale for adults from Europe’s dark heart. Then developed the after care and is becoming increasingly storydriven. It conforms to an equally driven as a lyrical thriller with a basis in traffickingens hell. Themes such as social heritage, personal responsibility and moral choices pulsates beneath the surface. A free, unique and very beautiful way to make a film that engages on all levels.
See more. Three other genre-bending, personal movies: Anna Odells ”Reunion” (2013), Sara Broos ”Reflections” (2016), Sophie Vukovics ”Shapeshifters” (2017).
Read more movie reviews in the DN
Link to the graphics