Emptiness

Nicole doesn’t want Suzanne to go near the barn. It could be dangerous, she says. But some compulsion draws Suzanne towards the rickety old building again and again.

Turkish-Canadian director Onur Karaman is known for his rather spare and downbeat approach to cinema. In this, his first English language film, his has stripped away everything but the essentials. It’s clear early on that this replicates, at least to some degree, the experience of his central character. Suzanne (Stephanie Breton) is amnesiac and confused. Is she suffering from dementia? Is she drugged? How much of what we see through her eyes is real, how much a product of dreaming? For most of the running time we don’t know, and neither does she. All she knows is that her husband Normand (Alexandre Dubois) is missing, and she has to find out what was happened to him.

Supervising Suzanne’s actions are Nicole (Anana Rydvald) and Linda (Julie Trépanier). The former is strict, sometimes to the point of cruelty, her hair drawn tightly back and her face under constant strain. She tells Suzanne that she should know by now that Normand isn’t coming back. Linda seems more sympathetic, trying to do things with Suzanne, to assist in her explorations – but can Suzanne trust either of them? Although they inhabit a spacious, nicely appointed farmhouse, use polite language and wear ordinary clothes, there is something Kafkaesque about the whole situation – and this, really, is what Karaman is trying to explore.

Are there some things which it’s better to forget? What if the cost of doing so is finding oneself empty, with no connections at all? All Suzanne’s striving seem to exacerbate her suffering. Inside, the house is photographed in black and white, as if formed as much by memory as observation. Key rooms are comfortably familiar, but Suzanne fear the corridors and less frequently used spaces, seeing visions of a woman in white who seems to be chasing her. Outside, at least some of the time, the world is ferociously red, a giant moon filling the sky. One wonders if something terrible has happened to the world – and yet, though they try to keep Suzanne indoors unless she is accompanied, Nicole and Linda don’t seem ill at ease in that way.

Breton’s tortured yet subdued performance speaks to tragedies which will be all too close to home for many viewers, and some will find it difficult to watch. The intrusiveness of mundane pressures, such as Nicole’s insistence that she eat more, is visible in Suzanne’s body language even when she struggles to articulate herself verbally. Cinematographer Thomas McNamara uses high ceilings and long shadows to give the subtle impression that the house is getting bigger and Suzanne smaller by comparison. In one scene she brandishes a knife and there’s that Rosemary’s Baby effect whereby she seems more vulnerable than she did before.

Necessarily slow paced, this is a film which some viewers will find difficult to engage with, but it’s a brave effort to explore what it means to be haunted.

Emptiness screened as part of the 2023 Fantasia International Film Festival.