The title “A Woman Escapes” is a reference to Robert Bresson’s 1956 classic “A Man Escapes”, which depicts a French resistance fighter imprisoned in a Nazi prison in Lyon. This intimate, yet sometimes understated epistolary film centers around a more contemporary moment in Paris as a woman named Audrey processes the death of her best friend. In what feels like her pandemic, she begins a correspondence that will serve as a lifeline from her feeling sadness and creative block.
Her video and audio exchange was done by the film’s co-directors, a supergroup of experimental filmmakers Sophia Bohdanowitz, Blac Cevik, and Blake Williams. Again, the medium is part of the message, with visual textures depending on the director’s preferences: 16mm film, high-definition video, and even her 3D.
As a result, it joins a long lineage of personal reciprocating films, which have been isolated in the aftermath of the pandemic and have taken on a “locked-in” period of screen intensive use. Audrey (Deller Campbell) walks around the apartment and works on her laptop, but the video letters take us outside, for example Chevik’s letter (searching Audrey’s neighborhood in vain on Google Maps). including contents) can be flown to the suburbs of Istanbul. ).
The unforgettable Campbell in the Canadian indie film Anne at 13,000 Feet delivers a more visceral performance that recalls the thoughtful focus she brought to her collaboration with Bodanowitz (MS Slavic 7). But here it is softened by staying awake. atmosphere of withdrawal. Her Audrey is nothing less than achieving a kind of communion through her voice and image.
woman runs away
Unrated. English and Turkish with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. at the theater.
