Aurélia Steiner (Melbourne) (1979 - Marguerite Duras)

Well I've seen this new board, and I thought I may as well post some of my reviews here, and someone one day may respond:

Aurelia Steiner's visually speaking is composed of shots of the Seine, as the light moves from the golden glow of evening to dusky colours.

The narration is in English, as you would expect from an Australian teenager (the eponymous Aurelia Steiner), it's addressed to person or persons unknown. Marguerite Duras does the narration in perfect English though it is nowhere near as impassioned as her narration for Cesarée, and thus seemingly deadened on purpose. In L'Homme Atlantique her narrated VOUS is fairly obviously directed at the audience to some extent, however in Aurelia Steiner this may or may not be the case, difficult to tell without the french vous/tu dichotomy of intimacy and the passionate voice. Her correspondent could just as well be an absent family member of friend, or an unresponsive penpal. It's possible that the correspondent (it's letters being narrated) is someone Duras knew in her real life, as the second in the series, Aurelia Steiner (Vancouver) has a similar narration to what could be a lover and was mentioned by Duras as being written to Yann Andréa.

As is the case with other experimental shorts by Marguerite Duras, the images, although beautiful are almost mood-setters, the true images come from the words of Aurelia Steiner, sometimes synchronising with the images. For example the shot traverses Notre Dame de Paris, which is actually a white building, but here the stone is yellowed by the late-evening sun, and Aurelia talks about voices ("they're speaking") telling her of palaces by streams with thickets of nettles and brambles between them, of island temples, and for a moment Notre Dame is on the Ganges. This reminded me of writer Italo Calvino and his Castle Of Crossed Destinies where stories are almost exclusively narrated by the placing of Tarot cards in sequences, the evocative symbols (forest, castle, well, mountain, gibbet) being generators of images that are particular to each reader, Calvino accepting how very much of the story rests in just these small kernels. Aurelia Steiner then will be a unique experience for whoever watches it. In this way it's almost anti-cinematic, the viewer isn't forced to see the fixed images that make up the fantasise of normal cinema.

The other building that features in the movie is the spectacular glass dome of the Grand Palais.

I think the films expresses both a love and a hatred for writing here, for example Aurelia is compelled to write down what the voices say, as a release but also she recognises that she cannot ever have a true connection to the reader, she describes a love that is terrifying and extreme, and how "you are not there to release it", perhaps writing is quixotic? Perhaps a writer is also a cruel observer, Aurelia mentions a white cat in the garden outside her window who is starving and whose condition deteriorates throughout the monologue, yet which she only describes instead of helping.

The river is something that Aurelia talks about so the images, as I've already hinted aren't entirely separate from the monologue; at one point she urges the viewer to see the sea beneath the river, quite an esoteric idea! The closing shot is very morbid, the flowing image has become static in the river, in the distance is a welcoming cove coloured as if by Christmas tree lights, the shot bends down to the brown river, which on focus is turbulent with silt. The monologue has become progressively more disturbing as the movie continues.

The images themselves are almost exclusively golden, although the last couple of shots are more of the palette of William Scott still lives, steely, with cold colour spots. This goldenness tallies with Aurelia's name which means golden.

I noticed that her name is an anagram of reine, Australie (french for queen, Australia), perhaps how she signs the letters she narrates? Aurelia is a beautiful name, a word for a subtype of chrysalis in zoology, where the chrysalis is coloured in beautiful metallic gold. Perhaps this 18-year old is about to emerge a wonderful butterfly? Alternatively it's a golden-tinted jellyfish. I've no idea if this duality was intentional but I love it.

Amongst other things Aurelia is a crater on the Planet Venus and the name of a once-proposed Australian State, which was to have seceded from the Colony of Western Australia.