Totem by Jessica Krummacher

As Fiona, a modest girl in her twenties, is welcomed by her employers, a sense of danger and awkwardness creeps in: the middle-aged couple, their daughter and her boyfriend seem like kids unwrapping a toy found under the Christmas tree. Fiona slowly becomes a white canvas where each of them paints his or her nagging little demons: she is put to work, touched, stuffed with food, hugged with warmth, looked down at for not knowing what to do with her future, danced with and so on. Krummacher seems to know her craft well: the story unfolds with perfect visuals and a precise rhythm, without any musical soundtrack or emotionally manipulative close-ups. What is most appreciable though is the director’s choice to offer us a portrait of daily-life disfunctionality, and not a pitiful melodrama about people putting up with anything for the sake of earning a living. Fiona is not an immigrant in the film, which underlines the intention, not to mention that she is no Cinderella who turns the other cheek. Moreover, even if the film blames the family directly for what happened, they are not the evil bourgeois typologies that you are forced to hate, but real humans with real problems as well.

The only problem with the film is that there are so many unexplored directions in there, and any one of them could have built a completely different work. Whether this is a conscious decision or just the insecurity of a first feature, one thing is for sure: Krummacher has got her own cinematic voice and style, and I look forward to watching her next work.

By Andreea Dobre