_{Splendid Isolation by Urszula Antoniak}

Anneke Sluiters and Khadija el Kharraz Alami, friends in real life, play the lovers. There is a third person (Abke Haring) who intrudes into their private, solitary world.

“Let us say, the beginning of this project was in the first lockdown,” says the Polish-Dutch filmmaker who, thanks to previous features include Nothing Personal (2009), Code Blue (2011), Nude Area* (2014), Beyond Words** (2017) and Magic Mountains (2020), is one of Europe’s most respected art house directors.

“Actually, I am a writer. I am always in a lockdown,” Antoniak elaborates. “I always sit at home… but suddenly, the whole country, everyone was in a lockdown.”

As the Covid pandemic took hold, the idea of death, which generally people try to keep safely in the background, loomed “very close.” Human beings were uncomfortably reminded of their own mortality.

“It was incredibly cruel that people were dying alone,” the director observes of the toll exacted by Covid. “This was, for me, a completely inhuman situation - completely lacking in empathy.”

Splendid Isolation has been described in certain quarters as a film about Covid but the director suggests the pandemic is really just the starting point for a far deeper cinematic meditation on the nature of separation and grief. “My film is as much about Covid as Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ is about plague,” she notes.

The director herself has spent many years reflecting on the death of her husband from cancer in 2004. “You have to deny the presence of death in order to help someone, to keep things going… and then there comes another stage when this denial looks like bad theatre, a parody,” the director talks about an experience almost everyone has to face eventually.

“And then, of course, comes the moment when death comes literally in between [you]. It comes very close and there is no denial any more. Then, of course, the person who is responsible, who is supposed to protect [the dying person] feels kind of guilty.

One instinct is to say “take me, not my lover,” as if it is possible to cut a deal with death. It is very hard for the bereaved to shake off their own feeling of “irrational guilt” that they have survived.”

“It is allegory of course,” the director continues as she explains the remote setting of the film. “Every time you assist someone in dying, you and this person are on an island. The world outside does not exist.”

Splendid Isolation is produced by Floor Onrust and Noortje Wilschut at Family Affair Films. The director is full of praise for her production partners. She describes Onrust as “a very good producer. She gives you the freedom to do your own stuff and she also makes a safe space for you.”

Early on, Antoniak had intended a man to come between the two women. However, partly because the actor she wanted was not available, she ended up casting three women. (She adds that Death does not really have a gender).

There are echoes here of Bergman’s Persona in which the characters played by Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann become so close that their personalities seem to merge. Antoniak, though, says she was thinking just as much about Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, with its presentation of Death as embodied in the Grim Reaper who likes to play chess on the beach. "The Seventh Seal is a modernist picture and the representation of Death there is pretty theatrical, but it fits,” she notes of the classic Bergman film.

Splendid Isolation was shot on the island of Terschelling, one of the western Frisian Islands, famous for its vast sandy beaches. “It is like a stage for a Beckett play, pretty abstract,” Antoniak jokes of its combination of beauty and empty spaces.

The striking modernist house on the island where the women are staying belongs to a prominent Dutch journalist, author and media personality. The budget was low. Almost the entire crew were women.

Antoniak shot the film on 16mm and speaks of the “sensual” quality of film which she feels is closer to the way the eye sees than digital cinematography.

Now, the writer-director is turning towards her new project Stranger, a love story/thriller which will again be produced by Floor Onrust, and in which she will be working with a non-professional actor from the Polish Roma community. This film will cost considerably more than Splendid Isolation. “Financing will take a lot of time. There is a disadvantage to making low budget movies but one advantage is that you can make them quicker…”

For more information on IFFR, click here.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Film Production Incentive