Salve Maria, the third feature by Spanish director Mar Coll, is an adaptation of the novel Mothers Don’t by Katixa Aguirre. It follows a new mother who becomes obsessed with a terrible crime, the disturbing case of a woman who drowned her infant twins during bathtime. In The Sparrow in the Chimney, the latest from Swiss brothers the Zürchers (Ramon and Silvan), a family gathering reveals the increasing tension between two very different sisters. What is the link between those two different titles? Except for the fact that they both were invited to the 77th Locarno Film Festival International Competition program?
Here are two different visions of motherhood, much more complex and nuanced portrayals of women and motherhood than in many other films. Female protagonists are trying to break with the social expectations of the roles that are imposed on them. They rebel against the commonly accepted patterns of being a good mother, daughter, sister. Thanks to this, both films intrigue, keep the viewer in suspense, leading to a surprising finale. Great credit for this goes to the main female characters, characters that are not obvious, but multi-layered, torn by inner emotions. And finally, both titles more or less introduce surreal, dreamlike and thriller elements, aestheticizing reality, emphasizing cognitive dissonance, questioning audience expectations.
Mar Coll in Salve Maria focuses on a subject rarely explored by cinema. She reveals the dark, shamefully hidden side of motherhood by evoking the myth of Medea, or such controversial female figures as Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir, or the film Saint Omer by Alice Diop, which in trying to unravel the unsolved mystery of the heroine and her crime complicates it even more. The titular Maria (a superb performance by Laura Weissmahr) is a devoted, loving mother to her baby. However, the joy of caring for her child does not overshadow the permanent fatigue, the sense of enslavement, the obsessive fears about whether the infant will come to any harm (in a surreal scene with a black bird), the anxieties about whether and how Maria will be able to return to her professional work. The woman is a writer, which is of considerable importance here. She has a sharpened sensitivity, a sense of fantasy. It is no coincidence that the story of the woman who drowned her infants hits a tender spot for Maria, experiencing a crisis of motherhood. She is shaken, trying to understand the motives behind this monstrous crime. This is not the image of motherhood promoted by the media and socially expected.
However, there is some truth in it. As in postpartum depression, affecting some women, but ashamed to talk about it. There are still many unacceptable taboos around motherhood. The moment when Maria whispers to her partner how she feels about the baby is an act of great courage and at the same time an act of liberation from the terror of motherhood understood as 24-hour constant happy devotion.
The Sparrow in the Chimney, directed by Ramon Zürcher, is also a story of liberation, and provides another uneasy and challenging perspective on motherhood. The beginning, an idyllic picture of a country house, foreshadows nothing disturbing. Karen and Markus live with their children in Karen’s childhood home. On Markus’ birthday, Karen’s sister Jule arrives with her family. The sisters are complete opposites. It recalls with its mutual cruelty Ingmar Bergman’s family drama Cries & Whispers and the sisterly relationships of the characters played by Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. Haunted by memories of her dead mother, Jule feels compelled to challenge Karen’s authority. As the house fills up, Karen’s tension grows until everything explodes, the house goes up in flames that bring a kind of purification, a release from the burden of the past. Even if the spectacular end of the family reunion takes place only in Karen’s imagination and head, the power of its flare is immense.
Karen (the phenomenal Maren Eggert) is a sister, a mother, a wife, whom no one in the household or family likes. Everyone resents her for something, feels anger, or at best coldness. Nowhere, however, is it explained exactly why. We can only guess at the traumas of the past, feeling how much emotion grips the actress, who is very reserved in expressing them. Karen is withdrawn, deeply unhappy, lost. She has never worked through the emotions of her past. She resembles the title sparrow, trapped in a chimney. The animalization of the characters here manifests itself in the destruction of rational behavior in favor of animal drives, instincts especially when the tension between the characters rises to the level of explosions. There is some kind of blockage in Karen that prevented and still prevents her from showing maternal and sisterly love, closeness, warmth. It is easy for Karen to judge, to judge that she was a bad mother, that she didn’t devote enough time to her children. This film is a reflection on how society perceives mothers. It expects them to always be perfect, caring, devoted, able to seamlessly combine professional work with domestic responsibilities, and this is what Salve Maria and Sparrow in the Chimney have in common. The absent or authoritian father is perceived as more normal than a mother like that.
The way the tension is shown in Sparrow in the Chimney, DP Alex Hasskerl’s hypnotic visual and sound effects, the editing, the camera movements—at first static and, as the first signs of chaos, more and more dynamic—build the atmosphere of danger well. Fire brings destruction but also relief. It signifies freedom, liberation from the past and brings hope for a new beginning. The Sparrow in the Chimney, with its unrealistic cinematography, is a fully polyphonic, unsettling film, in which every element is not accidental and perfectly complements the image of the whole.
Mariola Wiktor
Edited by Robert Horton
© FIPRESCI 2024