There are not really any sentimental stories in Sentimental Stories.
There are plot details that can arguably be recorded: a woman and her niece work in an often empty diner in the middle of a vast port; a couple apparently begins the process of separation; workers in fluorescent vests idle the day away. However, if there are narrative developments, they occur in almost imperceptible increments and remain oddly devoid of emotion. Both sentiment and stories seem eerily absent. And yet, Xandra Popescu’s short, which screens as part of the Orizzonti competition in Venice, has an irresistibly enigmatic timbre and tempo all of its own.
‘Cinema of stasis’ is a term that would more typically be applied to films packed with long shots that feature little to no movement either in front of, or behind, the camera. While that description would not be inaccurate here, the stasis in Popescu’s film feels far more fundamental. The world of Sentimental Stories, which feels hermetically sealed in a similar way to the shipyard of Evi Kalogiropoulou’s On Xerxes Throne, seems to be both outside time and utterly in its thrall. Like a clock hand that flickers with movement but never seems to progress, this is a world in which time does inch forward but through a miasma of longueurs and passivity.
“Sometimes it’s better to do nothing,” states the niece, amidst the portents of an unstable future. The dark clouds that she warns of could be those on the horizon for the young couple – the man who abandons his partner in the port, saying he has to go and get something he left behind, her subsequently wandering uninhabited places, perhaps looking for him, perhaps marking and relishing his absence. The threat of those same clouds could also be the reason a burgeoning romance between two co-workers seems to remain tantalizingly out of reach despite almost physically manifesting in the spaces between them. That all of these things remain slightly mysterious increases the effect of the potential hanging in the air, with nobody overly keen to release it.
Director, screenplay, producer: Xandra Popescu
Cast: Marie Tragousti, Estelle Widmaier, Artemis Chalkidou, Grego Belau, Leo Da Silva, Ezra Luke, Jesus Fernandez de Castro
Producers: Janna Fodor, Sabrina Holzapfel
Cinematography: Jonathan Steil
Editing: Xandra Popescu, Lorna Hoefler Steffen
Music: Khidja Red Axes
Sound: Ce?cile Perrot, Rita Dabrowska, Alex Feldman
Production design: Anna Klisetz
Production: Die Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin DFFB (Germany)
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti – Shorts)
In Greek, Spanish, French, German
16 minutes
