"Meshes"

Keeping in mind that this is an experimental/avant-garde film which lacks a narrative that can be easily followed, I had to watch it several times to make connections of the overlap of its “space” and “time”.  This film uses quite an amount of symbols of what I interpret to be depicting sexuality. The flower, key, lock, knife, phone, and ocean are some of the symbols I believe to stand for female and male reproductive organs. I do not know the original intentions of the filmmakers on a particular message they wished to convey, but with these symbols and certain theories we have read in class, I conclude depicting heteronormative female sexuality and purity values are the central themes exposed in this film.

            The symbols are representations of the following: A key opens the door to the house where more items reside. The key is phallic but the interchange with a knife throughout the film suggests the castration that represents woman. Flowers and oceans are very representative of the female organs. The flower appears throughout the film and is a recurring symbol, also transforming into a knife, evoking castration. The phone, especially how the receiver rests vertically on the stairs, is a phallic symbol that conveys an erect penis.

            With all these symbols and the form the film takes that distorts reality, I can’t help but think it is quite dream-like. Not only does it suggest this, but the film itself includes a portion of the film with the female character sleeping, then later having an “out-of-body” experience, meeting with other copies of herself, and even chasing a grim reaper/nun-like figure. It is possible that her subconscious was curious of the figure she had a glimpse of at the beginning of the film.

T. Modleski discusses the representation of women as death of male identity, and his ceasing to exist when identifying with female representation. The figure in black, which looks both like a grim reaper and a nun, simultaneously illustrates the female-death dynamic that this article discusses. I feel that in many societies, there is so much stress on a woman’s purity and preservation of it. Sometimes a woman that has been touched is deemed worthless, even deserving of death. The nun/grim reaper symbol also invokes the parallel of passiveness a pure woman is meant to maintain, with the immobility of a corpse as if “pure” women were dead or nonexistent to their sexuality.

This figure also possesses a mirror as a face. Even though the female character briefly chases it, she never catches up and never sees her reflection on the mirror, and she stays alive. This is an interesting play on the power of the gaze, because it is reminiscent of the Medusa myth and Lacan’s mirror stage. However, the female character does see her reflection throughout the film on the knife that is supposed to represent male castration—it reinforces her recognition of her femininity. The female character’s out-of-body experience ends when a male character comes into the film, replacing the knife coming at her. After, they both go up the stairs, where there is a mirror on a night stand, flower turns into a knife, and she throws it at a mirror with his reflection that shatters. The broken mirror falls into ocean, and she appears dead, covered in blood with mirror shards all over her body. When the mirror shatters with his reflection on it, it is as if she has seen something that ultimately leads to her death. Perhaps her gazing into the mirror and seeing his reflection instead of hers distorted her perception on her reality that she couldn’t accept and so the mirror shatters and falls on her, killing her.