Mourning for Anna (Catherine Martin; 2010): Canada

Reviewed by My Eklund. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011.

Devastated by the murder of her daughter, who was a passionate young violinist, the mother, Francoises, decides to take shelter, alone, in a house inherited from her mother, in the film Mourning for Anna. She has no one. Her husband left her before their daughter died, but that doesn’t seem to bother her. However, she doesn’t want to go on living and wanders out into the forest one cold morning in order to freeze to death. However she is discovered by a man, Eduard, who saves her from dying. They can’t help letting the passionate feelings of those times come back.

The opening shoot is of Francoise’s daughter, Anna, playing violin in a concert. It’s a very long take, zooming in on her. The duration of that shoot is approximate two minutes, which sets the stage for the film. It cuts to a much denser silent shoot of the daughter lying dead. The only audio that is used in the shoot is something dripping and we comprehend that it is blood.

As said, Françoise must choose between living or dying. In the house far away from reality, she attempts to reconstruct her interior life by getting back in touch with nature, and with the house and the objects that remind her of her daughter. But Françoise’s depression is overpowering. She wants to die.

The director emphasizes her grief even more with the surroundings; it’s cold; its winter; the plants shivers. Nature soothes her suffering, restores her faith in beauty.

These all lie at the heart of the story and help move the film forward, leading Françoise to rediscover her desire to live. In the house, she sees her grandmother, her mother and her daughter as human-like ghosts and they slowly give her the desire to live as well.

Eduard is a painter and has come back to live alone in his childhood home, because he too wanted to be alone. In him Françoise finds a similarity and safeness. They are both in a position where nothing seems possible.

In this film we can really feel her interior state. Françoise does a really good job conveying that. There are many long takes in this film, where we see Françoise sitting, lying. Her face is blank, but still there are so many emotions coming out of it. Catherine Martin, the director, uses close-up as well as long shots, to convey that she is so far away from living the life she wants to live, intermixed with emotional close-ups; conveying that there is no way out; there is no way for her to go back to the life she once had when her daughter was alive.

We continue to wonder what will happen between Françoise and Edouard. The storyline is simple, but yet very interesting. To me it didn’t matter how it ended; but more so her willingness to keep on living; with the most terrible loss which for her was her daughter.