Recently released on the Spanish billboard, the film by German director Emily Atef —but French produced—, starring actors Vicky Krieps and Gaspard Ulliel, is a powerful reflection on the unexpected death caused by a catastrophic condition.
By Jordi Mat Amorós and Navarro
Posted on 23.8.2023
“It’s weird, I’m sick but I feel good at the same time.”
Helen
Lhe renowned German and French director, screenwriter and producer (as well as an actress) offers us a wonderful film about the disconcerting feelings of a young woman who suddenly has to deal with a lung disease that seriously threatens her life.
With extreme sensitivity, he portrays the emotional ups and downs of Hélène (Vicky Krieps, in an excellent performance) and the difficult accompaniment of her devoted companion Mathieu (who embodies a convincing Gaspard Ulliel).
It is especially difficult for him when Hélène decides to abandon him – also her mother, her friends, her life in the city of Bordeaux – to retire to a cabin in the middle of the Norwegian fjords in the company of “old” Bent, a lonely man with the whom he contacted through social networks and with whom he shares painful feelings caused by his serious illnesses.
Before proceeding with this analysis I must warn that it inevitably contains spoilers (including the ending).
feel sick
A young woman with an apparently joyous life who suddenly finds herself very ill. Few people —and even less without the appropriate professional help or without the previous experience that comes with age— can face the emotional tides that arise in this abrupt discovery.
This is what happens to Hélène who does not know how to accept all this change and observes with discomfort the reactions of those closest to her.
In this way, he is particularly disconcerted by the optimism of good Mathieu, who is confident that everything will be solved —despite the very high risks— thanks to the only possible option for his illness: a difficult lung transplant.
This well-intentioned attitude of the man with whom she shares life and love is negatively experienced by Hélène, who seeks to get away from him and his entire known world in order to fully feel what lives in her and how hard it has been for her to communicate historically and what is difficult for her to transmit —now more than ever—being sick.
Hélène needs to feel her inner nature, she needs to feel deeply and feel her illness; a disease that symbolically manifests itself in suffocation.
To achieve this, he believes that a radical change of scenery is necessary, which he finds in the forceful nature of the Norwegian fjords, which Atef portrays in extreme beauty.
There he shares silences and some conversations with another “dying”, a term that defines them both according to his partner Bent, who is seriously ill with cancer. A man who decided to isolate himself from the world because he understands that the “living” do not understand the “terminals”.
love and freedom
However, Hèléne maintains telephone contact with the “alive” Mathieu who decides to travel to that natural paradise when he sees that his partner does not want to return and also when he knows that she has suffered a severe suffocation crisis walking alone through the forest.
The young woman explains that after that episode of near death she understood something important that is difficult to explain: «It is like a scare and at the same time it is comforting, it is reassuring. It’s weird, I’m sick but I feel good at the same time.”
All this extreme experience leads him to affirm that he does not want the transplant, that he does not want to die in a hospital if the surgery does not work: “I do not want the doctors to decide my destiny”, he concludes with total conviction.
Now together again, Mathieu listens to her as perhaps he had never done before, the two break in their feelings. He wants to stay there with her and she wants him to leave her because she understands that she no longer has a future, and especially because she knows that it hurts him to see her sick and Hélène is scared to see that pain in her eyes every time. that he looks at her
Hélène claims to hate each other for her illness, which deprives both of them of “everything we will never be again”. And she asks him if he understands her, Mathieu expresses her dissenting feelings but out of love for her he gives her that freedom —of choice— that she asks of him.
Before returning to Bordeaux, they make love. Perhaps it is the most beautiful and justified love scene that I have ever seen in an audiovisual work.
A lovemaking that is pampering and mutual care, a lovemaking that is gratitude, a lovemaking that is passion of resonant skins, a lovemaking that is rhythmic breathing despite her omnipresent lung disease that leads them to both to take their breaks.
Splendid and human scene that is the embodiment of the art of loving as a couple.
For all the above, my heartfelt recommendation to watch this film that tells us about the disease with a high risk of death and before it, the freedom of the “dying” to choose their destiny. A committed show that has true love as a backdrop.
I understand that Emily Atef Atef invites us to reflect on Hélène’s decision, a decision that seeks the understanding and acceptance of the beloved partner, that seeks to overcome the egotistical interest that characterizes true love, which is empathy: «I am choosing how I want to go, I don’t want the doctors to choose for me».
***
Jordi Mat Amorós and Navarro He is an educational therapist graduated from the University of Barcelona, Spain, as well as a dowser, poet, and permanent editor of the Diario Cinema and Literature.
Trailer:
Jordi Mat Amorós and Navarro
Outstanding image: More than ever (2022).
2023-08-24 16:49:04
#Ensayo #Freedom #disease #Cinema #Literature
