Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the inner turmoil felt by Colo (Isabelle Huppert) after learning that she may lose her sight unless she has an urgent operation. Instantly rebuffing the ultimatum from her eye specialist (Sean Scully) to have her left eye removed or to lose her sight completely, Colo returns to a house in the countryside to grapple with her decision. Colo’s despair is captured through the use of slow camera movement, lighting cues and symbolic imagery.

Educational value points

• The use of one long unbroken shot on Colo in the doctor’s office focuses attention on Colo’s dilemma – the sacrifice of one eye to save her sight. As Colo is given an ultimatum by the doctor, the camera, in one slow movement and without any cuts, moves via a gradual zoom-in from a two-shot (two people in one frame) to a close-up of her face. The close-up shifts the focus from the rationale of the medical solution to her inner anguish and confusion.

• At the end of the clip Colo unexpectedly looks out of frame and into the camera, implicating the viewer in her plight. Her direct address breaks the objective distanced view of her torment provided by the fixed camera, which had been tracking her almost dispassionately. The challenging device of direct address is used to draw the viewer into an emotional and psychological bond with Colo.

• Colo’s torment is viscerally captured by a combination of lighting, performance and staging. In the scene in the house, Isabelle Huppert’s quietly intense emotional expression and gestures, along with her determined stride to the window and back, expresses the loss that Colo faces and her extreme anguish. In the scene she is cast in shadow, but light is reflected onto her eyes, further focusing the viewer’s attention on her plight.

• In the house scene the amplification of sounds as Colo contemplates her choice creates tension and anticipates the blindness that could await her. The sounds in this scene, such as the call of birds, Colo’s feet scuffing the floor and the opening of the door, are amplified beyond normal audible levels, approximating the heightened aural awareness of a blind person. This use of sound subliminally informs the viewer what is at stake for her.

• At the end of the clip, Colo’s eyes are superimposed over a field of sunflowers as part of a transitional fade – in film, the technique of layering images directly over each other can be used to visually connect two seemingly unrelated images. In this clip, the device invites the viewer to see through Colo’s eyes and to understand what she stands to lose.

• In the final shot of the sunflowers, the camera’s movement and the colouring and lighting of the image create a sense of idealised place and time. The brightly lit saturated greens and yellows of the sunflowers and the unsteady hand-held camera combine to approximate the feel of an old home movie or a distant memory seen through longing eyes.

Colo is sitting with an eye specialist in his surgery.
Eye specialist The tablets and drops are helping but you can see that the vision’s not good anymore. The left eye must be removed. There’s no alternative, I’m afraid.
Colo fidgets with her cardigan as the doctor gets up to retrieve a file.
Colo And the right eye?
Eye specialist At best, the vision will be poor.
Colo What do you mean? What do you mean, ‘poor’?
Eye specialist Difficult to be sure at this stage. The very least you can expect is to be able to see doorways, large pieces of furniture, be able to tell that there’s somebody there without being able to see who it is.
Colo Hmm. And if I don’t have my left eye removed? What if I keep it? What happens then?
Eye specialist I’d expect the vision to grow worse, much worse.
There is a long pause in the conversation. Colo looks away.
Colo But I don’t understand – completely blind?
Eye specialist Yes, more or less. We don’t have much time. It has to be removed.
There is another long pause in the conversation. Colo looks down, shakes her head, holds her fingers to her lips and whispers something in French.
Colo I don’t want to.

We hear dramatic music and the sound of birds over a view of the sun setting. Colo is pacing back and forth in a room with old framed pictures on the wall. She walks into an adjoining room, looks out the window for a few seconds and then returns to the other room. She rocks back and forth, putting her hand up to her head and in her mouth. She wipes her face which is wet with tears.

We see a field of sunflowers.