DIRECTED BY: Lucile Hadzihalilovic

FEATURING: Paul Hilton, Romane Hemelaers, Romola Garai

PLOT: A servant looks after a girl without teeth, who wears dentures made of ice.

COMMENTS: The fanciful dental system utilized by young Mia is elaborately efficient. She wears a headpiece with a metal brace affixed with two glass reservoirs. As the ice teeth melt, the reservoirs collect the moisture. This liquid is then poured into molds to create a new set of teeth, which replace the set awaiting her in the freezer in a regular cycle. Why ice should be a suitable material with which to make prosthetic teeth is a question worth asking of Earwig. Both ice and glass are solidified liquids that can be molded into strong, hard surfaces which retain an aspect of delicacy and fragility. And glass, when broken, to paraphrase Jean Ray is like the best of stories—it can cut you like a knife.

Middle-aged Albert assiduously attends to the girl’s dentures as Mia’s lone butler/servant/caretaker. The two reside in dusty, sparsely furnished rooms in a massive old apartment building where the routine of replacing the dentures shapes their days. When not patiently sitting through her dental procedures, Mia amuses herself by making her own toys out of scraps of newspaper, watching a painting of a grand chateau for curious changes in the composition, and observing the flow of sunlight through ruby-red cocktail glasses.

Mia seems like an easy charge, despite the dental care, but Albert always wears a strained expression, as though suffering a perpetual headache. But though one might guess he’s eagerly awaiting the day when his duties will come to an end, he appears genuinely disturbed when his “master” phones to tell him it’s time to prepare the girl for the outside world.

Earwig crafts a story of enigmatic destinies in an unspecified post-war time period, in an unidentified European city. The actors speak English, although there’s hardly any dialogue; the first twenty-four minutes of the film occur in silence. Characters drift through their memories, dreams and nightmares in barely populated fog-choked landscapes. The interiors appear encased in amber, glowing dimly with yellowish lights. Where most directors would punctuate the slow passage of time with monotonous clock-ticking, Earwig features a score of resonances, like the fulsome tones from a glass harmonica. The entire world seems brittle to the point of breaking, and all it takes is the appearance of vaguely sinister strangers with undefined ulterior motives to upset the balance.

Mia’s dentures suggest an apt metaphor for the film itself, which parcels out its secrets to the gradual rhythm of melting ice, without ever explaining anything. Images of the old chateau and shafts of light shining through glassware illuminate forgotten memories which may also be figments of the imagination. Just how the film’s lost souls, (possibly) deceased spouses, and (maybe) missing children are connected remains hazy and shrouded in mystery.

With its glacial pacing, obscure symbolism, and sudden bursts of irrational violence, Earwig may appeal to fans of Tarkovsky, or Werner Herzog‘s Heart of Glass. Adapted from the book by Brian Catling, author of The Vorrh trilogy, and that may be all you need to know.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

” .. like the young girls in Hadzihalilovic’s Innocence (2004) and the young boys in her Évolution (2015), Mia is being prepared for a rite of passage which is presented in the irrational idioms of surrealism…. Earwig keeps its secrets which is precisely what will ensure that its enigmatic, oneiric visions burrow their way into the darker crevices of the viewer’s consciousness. “– Anton Bitel, Sight and Sound (contemproaneous)

The Worlds Of Lucile Hadžihalilović

• INNOCENCE, EVOLUTION, EARWIG, THE ICE TOWER & shorts. A 4-disc journey through one of France’s most singular contemporary filmmakers.

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