MEDEE MIRACLE
France, 2007, 81 minutes, Colour.
Isabelle Huppert, Tommaso Ragno, Giulietta De Bernardi, Lou Castel, Isabel Ruth.
Directed by Tonino De Bernardi.
Medee Miracle is written and directed by lecturer and experimental filmmaker, Tonino Di Bernadi. He is collaborating with Isabelle Huppert whom he admired in the past and wanted to work with, eventually re-working the Medea story in contemporary times. Isabelle Huppert brings her customary aplomb to this performance, looking always the same but somehow or other, incarnating quite a different character from her other films.
Her ire in Medea is a refugee from Eastern Europe, having betrayed her father, coming to France with her husband - who then abandons her for a French wife. She supports her children, singing in nightclubs (Crazy Love, Nick Cave’s song made popular by Marianne Faithful). She has the assistance of a nanny, played by the director’s daughter, Giulia. She also has a scene with veteran Italian actor Lou Castel who plays her father.
Finding herself a foreigner in France, not accepted, upset by her husband’s infidelity, getting revenge on him by having a different man at her home every night, imagining, like Medea, that she killed her children out of vengeance, she eventually decides not to follow the path of this violence (hence the ‘Miracle’ in the title) and moves to the countryside in order to help shelter-less women. At the end, even this is literally a struggle.
This is an art film, a study of a woman, an adaptation of a literary work, experimental video production, and lighting, using both colour and black and white. It is a film for film buffs.
1.A specialist film? For film buffs? For technical film-making buffs?
2.The work of Tonino De Bernardi? Experimental? His use of film styles and stock? Video?
3.The Paris settings? The streets, the homes, the nightclub? Authentic atmosphere? The countryside? The interiors of public buildings? The atmosphere this created? Some scenes in colour? Others in black and white?
4.The musical score? The use of classical music? The use of Nick Cave’s song, ‘Crazy Love’, as sung by Isabelle Huppert?
5.Audience knowledge of Euripides’ Medea? Medea and her marrying Jason, leaving her country behind, deceiving her father? Going into exile, seen as a foreigner? Her children? Jason’s abandoning her? Her vengeance in killing her children?
6.The transition of the Medea story to contemporary France? Irene Medea from Eastern Europe? Her deceiving her father? Going with Jason? Living in France but being a foreigner? Her temptation to kill her children – her dream, but deciding not to? Her own infidelities in revenge? Her singing ‘Crazy Love’ in the nightclubs to sustain her children?
7.The character of Irene Medea? Isabelle Huppert’s screen presence and performance? In the waiting rooms, walking the streets, the happy birthday cake and party? The comment about taking men home? Martha and her spying on her? Her relationship with her children, love, not harming them? Her anger with Jason? Confronting his new wife? Her survival? Sitting in the streets and begging? The encounter with the bookseller asking where she was from? Her sense of alienation? Theatre transition to the country? A new vocation? The homeless people? Her visit to her father and his condemnation of her?
8.Martha, friendship, looking after the children, accompanying Irene? Helping her?
9.The glimpse of Jason, his womanising, his friendship with Irene, but not staying with her? With the children?
10.Jason’s wife, Irene confronting her in the street, warning her?
11.The theme of the homeless woman, seeing her in the waiting room? The struggle with Irene? The purpose? The result?
12.The structure of the film: the chapters? The effect of distancing the audience from the action?
13.A portrait of Irene? How strong a character study? Understanding of her psychology or not? The audience mean to be comparing the cotemporary Irene with the mythical Medea? The title and the fact that she did not kill her children?
