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Clip description
After they’ve witnessed the disinterment of Andreas’s wife’s grave together, Andreas (Charles Tingwell) and Claire (Julia Blake) walk on the pier at sunset. Andreas asks Claire to stay with him overnight and she agrees without hesitation. They go to his room and he assents to closing the curtains and shutting his eyes while she undresses. A flashback shows the young Andreas (Kenny Aernouts) undressing the young Claire (Kristine Van Pellicom). The film then cuts between brief sequences of the couple making love, now and then.
Curator’s notes
In both the present day and flashback sequences, the emotion of the lovers is emphasised – the lovemaking is exactly that, rather than pure physical sex; tender rather than simply lustful. Similar lighting and camera angles in both time frames strengthens the continuity between past and present – a sense that for all the intervening decades and awkwardness over aging bodies, their love has the same intensity as it did when they were young.
Cox’s films have frequently used flashback sequences shot in the relatively rough-hewn format Super 8. An example in this clip is the final few frames of the young Claire at a railway station. However, the use of 35mm stock in the lovemaking scenes (and for a flashback sequence at the start of the film) brings the past more immediately into the present.
