Conversations with ragged women film’s backbone – Swedish Dagbladet

From “Vinterboj” Photo: People’s Cinema

Rating: 4 of 6

The other week was reported that the Swedish documentary films have higher average grades than fiction movies. Enough can be suspected critics of being seduced of important topics.

Who wants to seem heartless as well?

Personally, I see the form and storytelling is as important as substance in reality depiction. To “manipulate” is essential in meeting with the familiar otherwise we miss seeing it with new eyes.

I use the word “manipulation” on purpose, because the director Frida Kempff use it for his documentary “Vinterboj”. A film whose subject could hardly be more deserving and broken: A group of nurses in Toronto specialize in pregnant women with misuse problems and vulnerability.

The film’s backbone is the conversation between nurses and patients: Doris, who is soon to retire and her younger protégé Talia meet women who Vera. Pregnant for the eighth time with, hopefully, a life that crack users behind. The talks are in the parlor, cafés and transitional housing. They provide glimpses of the terrible fates, but has at the same time an almost terrifying objectivity: “In the alley, I smoked crack.” “After the bottle of tequila went awry.” The rest, we imagine ourselves.

But the call without clip images, lighting and music orientation is – contrary to what Kempff says – also manipulation. One that draws us into nurses work with these women. In the process behind building relationships and trust with people who may never have had working them into their lives.

These long chunks of social reportage would never functioned as a cinema film without the air Kempff beautifully built between them. Stationary images on everything from nurses empty office or hospital facade to a statue of the Virgin Mary, an organist in front of his church organ or Toronto’s skyscrapers in the winter air white expiration.

It is everyone freely To interpret these inklippsbilder as symbols of hope or humanity performed by ordinary people, such as jogging and relax at the bingo hall as everyone else. But without these often poetic mood moments we had not had anything to land in. They provide breathing and pauses.

This is known as told and it is always manipulative because it directs our gaze and affects how we feel. It highlights – even if it is done with minimal fuss and interventions – a film from a series Slicers to storytelling.

And that makes all the difference.