Mara and Lisa are old friends and former flatmates in Berlin. Their life under the same roof is coming to an end: Lisa is moving into a new flat and leaving Mara in their once shared space—perhaps, leaving her in the past. The second film by Swiss directors Ramon and Silvan Zurcher is a low-key yet poignant picture about the daily inner disasters that remain unseen to the eye and barely audible. The picture shared the Best Director prize in the Encounters program and received a FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin International Film Festival 2021.
The Girl and the Spider is the second film in the" human togetherness" trilogy by twin directors Ramon and Silvan Zurcher (after The Strange Little Cat, 2013). Like the first picture, it is set inside geometric interiors and completely focused on its characters: their faces, their personalities, and their borderline, if peaceful on the surface, states.
The ambiguous, unrealized, and at times fierce relationships between the characters who clash and dominate one another onscreen create a dazzling kaleidoscope—a web of glances, hints, inner dramas, and passions. Working with subtexts, the Zurcher brothers expand the space of their "doll house" through the impressive score—a skillfully orchestrated cacophony of the knocking and clashing sounds of the move and renovation that bring to mind "the sound of a breaking string" from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. The unexpected musical theme of The Girl and the Spider, Eugen Doga's waltz Gramophone underscores the surrealist yet very recognizable feeling behind the story that unfolds on the screen.
The film will be screened in German with Russian subtitles.
The Girl and the Spider
Directors: Ramon and Silvan Zurcher
Switzerland, 2021. 98 min. 18+