MIRROR

Sara Eustáquio is one of the few film directors that at the tender age of 17 years old manages to create a powerful yet beautifuly structured story, without using a cliché-istic approach like the rest of the teenagers tend to do when they start making their first short films.

The entire film is focused on the feelings and the emotions of an obviously disturbed girl. After reaching home, she goes straight to the bathroom, starring insistently in the mirror like she is arguing with her inner self, perhapsly looking for an answer to her problems. The film doesn’t use spoken language, so we can’t find out more about the main character, but this isn’t even necessary. Her body language and expresiveness is full of meaning, giving an absolutely reamarkable performance for such a young and unexperienced actress. Through the carefully taken shots, her peronality is enhancing little by little and the impact upon the viewer gets more intense. At some point, the audience reaches to even empathise with her state of mind, even if we don’t know with what issues she was dealing after all.

One of the details we appreciated the most was the creativity and the courage to experiment with diverse techinques. Starting from the close-up images shot from different angles to the alternative editing that gives a dynamic and turmoiled atmosphere, this film really stands out from the crowd and reveals some amazing skills that we often don’t see even at the more experienced filmmakers. Also, the sound design was very profound, underlining perfectly every moment of the film, growing in intensity and evoking the feelings of loneliness, estrangement and fear.

We gotta say that we were deeply impressed of what a 17 year old teenager can do with a movie camera and we are looking forward to see other projects from Sara Eustáquio, hoping that someday we will see a feature film as beautiful and powerful as her short films are.

film review by Ligia Prodan