VERDICT: A single wide-angle perspective gives an eerily voyeuristic air to this smart, lowkey exercise in building tension.
The whole of Dammen features a static, picturesque view across a woodland lake.
When the film opens, two deer stalk across the foreground, a doa and fawn, picking their way through the bushes. When they are disturbed by a boat gliding across the serene sun-dappled water and two young women get out to sunbathe, the scene remains idyllic. However Gregoire Graesslin’s quietly menacing short film is not as interested in languorous lakeside chitchat as very gradually ratcheting up a mounting tension. Dammen screens this week at Oldenburg Film Festival having premiered earlier in the year at Cannes.
The tension is imperceptible to begin with, as Aurelien Py’s unmoving and unblinking camera cooly observes proceedings from its waterfront spot. Whether it is the deer or the two young women – Liv (Henneguier) and Clara (Bretheau) – makes no difference as it gazes on. Unblinking is not quote accurate, though, as the camera does blink. Sporadically the scene changes via a cut to black, allowing time to pass in the forest. The girls gossip and then soak in the rays, topless, viewed as if from a distance, from the bushes, like someone is watching. Perhaps they are, as something happens that suddenly introduces a sense of anxiety to proceedings.
Dammen is a film in which very little technically happens on screen, but what the audience and protagonists can infer has happened cuts all the deeper. As the camera keeps cutting to black and returning with the daylight dimming, a sense of dread begins to coalesce on the screen. The forest is transformed from being a bucolic wonderland to somewhere far more sinister and dangerous, where what lurks off screen is left to our vivid, and increasingly panicked imaginations.
Director, screenplay: Gregoire Graesslin
Cast: Liv Henneguier, Clara Bretheau
Producer: Laurine Pelassy
Cinematography: Aurelien Py
Editing: Giulua Rodino
Sound: Vivien Roche, Regis Diebold
Music: Olaf Hund
Production company: Les Films de la Capitaine (France)
Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Shorts)
In French
15 minutes
Read more of our short film coverage over at Verdict Shorts
