Gladki (Kolja Saksida) staggers out of hospital and in desperation telephones his sister Lupa (Manca Dorrer) for help. Arriving too find him collapsed, Lupa resolves to wean him off drugs. Renting an apartment in a run down building to keeps their location secret from Gladki's doctor, she manages to get some medication through a friendly social worker. Then, just when Lupa has got Gladki over his cold turkey, she learns that he has full-blown AIDS and only wants to die with some semblance of dignity…
The debut feature from young Polish writer-director Hanna Antonina Wojcik-Slak, the Slovenian-shot Blind Spot is the sort of film that is easier to admire or appreciate than actually enjoy.
Dull and depressing is the obvious alliteration that springs to mind.
On the upside, Slak has an assured visual sense, which she demonstrates through a number of interesting compositions, like the opening sequence where Gladki escapes from the hospital or a near-abstract shot of an escalator viewed from above and sideways on.
These moments also, however, have a tendency to come across as self-conscious artistry and thereby jar somewhat against the raw, austere, naturalism rather than emerging as true moments of Bressonian spiritual transcendence growing organically out of it.
Nonetheless, any attempt to combine Ken Loach, Robert Bresson and the visual style of Dogme 95 can to at least go down as a honourable failure, neither lacking in good intentions nor ambition.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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