2011 12 30
by Leontine Arvidsson
Sweden 2012, 3 minutes
The young woman, not too sexy, but not bad looking either, stands naked before a yellow door and paints the outlines of her body on it. While she’s drawing, we only hear the sound of her movements. It’s not an easy task to do without a mirror; she has to twist her body. The result is a friendly crooked sketch on the wall. She turns around and we can see only a slim line as a mouth, which seems to be wary and witty like a child’s drawing. She steps back and we see a female sketch with only one breast. But she had two breast while she was drawing – otherwise we would have noticed it, wouldn’t we?
The woman turns again, caresses her breasts, takes the left one off and throws it at the door, where it sticks at the right place for the missing breast in the drawing. A piece of artwork, smiling and daring, greets us and seems to calm the rage of the one breasted woman. This simple story serves as a study of how a woman with breast cancer feels after her operation – just like in “Utan Titel”, the other film by Leontine Arvidsson (28) in competition. The director directly faces her protagonist’s emotions. She doesn’t show her crying or complaining, but acting in an unexpected way that makes you think about female tragedies.
Berlinale Shorts 