Golven

Golven is taken from The Waves (1931) by Virginia Woolf. In the film there are six main characters who keep trying to catch that sense of harmony that children feel. The intensity of childhood, the optimism of youth and disenchantment of the following years are shown through their thoughts. Their perceptions and their feelings move like waves, back and forth trough the narration.
The presentation of the thoughts of these six characters covers their growth, from childhood to adulthood: it is a challenge to face life.
The main event of the film is the meeting in 1920, in a London restaurant, of Bernard, Neville, Rhoda, Jinny, Susan and Louis. They have lunch together before Percival’s departure to India.
In a way, Percival is the mirror in which every character can see he’s ideal reflection. He’s always a mysterious figure. After a dinner which evokes different levels of harmony and happiness, they get to know that Parcival died in an accident. His death marks the start of the deterioration of the group and of every member of it.
After Parcival’s death, it seems clear that the carefully structure tale can’t hold up anymore and it collapses. The illusion that life and reality are stories that can go on, where events keep following each other in a systematic way, falls.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

I think that what fascinates me about cinema is its double nature.
On one side, the film captures reality in a certain moment and can reproduce it almost perfectly. On the other, the film can be a building, something that is totally conceived, that has nothing to do with reality. At the moment I’m interested in finding out to what extent can these two elements coexist in the same film. (…)
One of the reasons I’m so intrigued by the book is Bernard’s character. He keeps saying he can tell amazing stories and he tries to hold on to life and reality through these tales. But it gradually becomes clear that none of these stories is appropriate and neither are all the stories as a whole. During life, the illusion of discovering reality through these tales slowly fades away. That’s my attitude towards films, such as Hitchcock or von Sternberg’s classic Hollywood movies. I like both these classic ones and those which try to overturn them. Bernard says: “We keep telling each other stories, but none of them is true; but nevertheless, we keep doing that”. (…)
The structure of the film shows the author writing and evoking the scenes. You can hear Elizabeth Anderson’s voice and see a few close-ups of the actors. Then the camera comes back to the author, while the actors face the script. At the end of the film, you can see that the author herself has become part of the fiction. You can see her as part of Bernard’s memories on Elvedon. It feels like she wrote herself into the narration, as the woman who sits in the terrace writing.
There are several topics, in the film, but maybe it can be considered a film on childhood and youth, on something weightless. The characters meet at the restaurant not for Parcival’s departure, this is just an excuse to get together and rediscover the feeling they had when they were children. It is a sense of harmony they really miss and that they can’t have back, like a bubble that suddenly burst. (…)
I think that Golven represents, for me, a comparison with Duras and Straub, but also an attempt to avoid their influence, which is pretty ruinous, especially for other directors.
It’s wrong to focus too much on removing the narration; a certain narrative element can have a great impact and it shouldn’t be forgotten. This is another issue that has been faced in Golven, and it reflects a certain conflict. It’s not a casualty that the film points to a specific kind of narration and then refuses it. To say that “the stories aren’t true” lost its meaning. I think it is becoming a sort of fight: on one side we need to see and admire the attraction and the seductive ability of the narration; on the other, the positive effect of the anti-narrative trend is to flee the anecdotal.
This allowed to talk about every topic in the film. There was a sort of freedom to move from the bottlenecks of the story with a beginning, a development and an ending.
Annette Apon
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala

Director and screenplay: Annette Apon.
Plot: dal romanzo The Waves (1931) di Virginia Woolf.
Director of photography: Theo Van De Sande.
Music: Louis Andriessen.
Sound: Roel Bazen.
Art director: Frank Rosen.
Editor: Ton De Graaf.
Cast and characters: Aat Ceelen (Neville), Thea Korterink (Rhoda), Michel Van Rooy (Louis), Truus Te Selle (Jinny), Marianne Stieger (Susan), Edwin De Vries (Bernard), Gerardjan Rijnders (Percival).
Producer: Gerard D'Olivat.
Production company: René Scholten per Studio Niewe Gronden.
Italian distribution: Film International.