Meeting at the Seaside

Rendez-vous à la Mer (Meating at the seaside) is a poetic short film about the dying process of Fritz. The film develops as a thought, a sigh, a poem. Fritz wakes up on his deathbed by the sea, where he receives the last cleansing by his beloved, Ulrich. An endless now-moment carries the ritual in which they say farewell to each other. The changing image formats allow the viewer to move between the subjective experience of Fritz and real time. This blurs the boundaries between inside and outside, present, past and dream. With the sea as an auditory guide, Fritz experiences the world through his senses, without being able to do anything himself. The objective scenes construct the sober narrative arc; Ulrich enters a room, washes, dries and embalms Fritz, dresses him and covers him with a white sheet. When she is finished, she waits for something that could mark the end or the final death. But Ulrich is only faced with emptiness, and a great sense of agitation overwhelms her. Absorbed by Ulrich and the world of the dead which is more and more imposing on him, time passes Fritz by until he is pulled away abruptly by another dimension over which he has no control. Just like Fritz experiences his world passively, the audience gets no explanation or interpretation of the different characters that come along. The absence of dialogue and the sudden ending leave the viewer with a cinematic experience, coloured by existential questions, with only the memory of what attracted the attention.

Year

2019

Director

Maïté Baillieul