“教えて。あなたが、どう人に愛されてきたのかを。”
寝たきりの父親の介護のため、通院をするつらい日々が続き、彼女自身、他人に触れられることに拒否反応を示すようになった中年女性のローラ。そんなある日、彼女は、病気で全身が無毛となったトーマスや、四肢が不自由で普段は車椅子生活を送るクリスチャンら、体にさまざまな障害がある患者同士が、お互いの体に触れ合い、自らの気持ちを率直に語り合いながらカウンセリングをする様子を目にして、大きな刺激と啓示を受ける。
監督: Adina Pintilie
脚本: Adina Pintilie
音楽: Ivo Paunov
制作: Philippe Avril / Adina Pintilie
制作会社: Manekino Film / Rohfilm / Agitprop / Les Films de L'Etranger / Pink Productions
...or perhaps just "Watch Me Not"? In theory this could have made for quite an interesting look at just how different people deal with intimacy - emotional and the more tactile variety. To that end we spend an over-long two hours in the company of "Laura" (Laura Benson) whose proclivities, attitudes and remarkable recoil and roaring abilities are demonstrated, as are those of her subjects."Tómas" (Tómas Lemarquis) and "Christian" (Christian Bayerlein). Much of this is relayed through a series of scenes with a very much more participative analyst than many in "Hanna" (Hanna Hofmann) who is a transexual but that's neither here nor there to this meandering exercise in soft-porn introspection disguised as "insight". What simply doesn't work is the sheer amount of pointless verbosity, from start to finish, that ensures that this takes on more of a lecture (or documentary) for the curiously prurient than an engaging drama. Auteur Adina Pintilie (who also features here) obviously has a message she wished to convey, but she didn't establish enough distance between the reality and the fiction of this production to enable me know just what she's getting at. Everyone has boundaries, and these are not consistent - either personally, emotionally or physically - so what's the point of taking this rather monotonically simplistic approach to human nature and suggesting it's going to induce empathy. Baring the soul isn't always an easy thing to watch, but when you are this detached from the subject matter is just becomes too observational. I felt like I was sitting in on conversations that were none of my business between people about whom I couldn't really care less. By half way through I was looking at the cinema ceiling wondering if I could ever find myself - or my peccadilloes - interesting enough to put on display in such a contrived and unnatural fashion. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood, but this falls uncomfortably between half an dozen stools and was wasted on me, sorry.
