Quiet and beautiful, all uneasy and tragedies hidden in the winter snow.
2 Reviews
Like a window into hell
myriamlenys22 June 2019
Warning: Spoilers
This dark gem is loosely inspired by the life and times of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, a seventeenth-century noblewoman who seems to have known her way about a poison or two. However, this is not a realistic historical depiction. Instead it is an expressionist take on the nature and effects of dangerous madness. The Marquise is a woman at the end of her mental and emotional tether who starts killing, perhaps in a last desperate attempt to rid herself of obligations which have become unbearable. Or then, the killing spree might be a final attempt at regaining something ressembling an individual life and autonomous personality...
Note the drunken, jerky, lopsided movements of the Marquise, like those of a puppet controlled by a clumsy puppeteer - or (who knows ?) like those of a puppet which tries to escape its strings.
In its own way, "Les condiments" is also an indictment of a feudal society. Where to go, if you're a humble kitchen maid or an uneducated gardener and if you think that your employer - your powerful and aristocratic employer - is beginning to show questionable behaviour ? It's entirely possible that even the tiniest of peeps could lead to you starving in the gutter or to you spending five months in a rat-infested prison cell.
The form of "Les condiments" is quite original, what with influences from silent movies, still-life painting, ballet and kabuki theatre. It all results in a unique and uniquely disquieting work. The use of colours too is interesting : note the artful use of red, the colour of life, seduction, exuberance and fertility, but also the colour of violence, shame, death.
Deserves to be known to a larger public.
Note the drunken, jerky, lopsided movements of the Marquise, like those of a puppet controlled by a clumsy puppeteer - or (who knows ?) like those of a puppet which tries to escape its strings.
In its own way, "Les condiments" is also an indictment of a feudal society. Where to go, if you're a humble kitchen maid or an uneducated gardener and if you think that your employer - your powerful and aristocratic employer - is beginning to show questionable behaviour ? It's entirely possible that even the tiniest of peeps could lead to you starving in the gutter or to you spending five months in a rat-infested prison cell.
The form of "Les condiments" is quite original, what with influences from silent movies, still-life painting, ballet and kabuki theatre. It all results in a unique and uniquely disquieting work. The use of colours too is interesting : note the artful use of red, the colour of life, seduction, exuberance and fertility, but also the colour of violence, shame, death.
Deserves to be known to a larger public.
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