Noir-Soleil

The volcano hurls painted smoke at the sky, as if seeking to push the heavens further with each sulfurous effort. Beneath the waves of a nearby lake the ground itself moves, and differently from a realm of the dead does a skeleton emerge. "After last night's earthquake we discovered a body that might be his".

Unhurried, a slow tread through the forest at night. Reflective, a dog lapping at a mirror still pond. Moody, the build of woodwind as a path through woods is wound. Still save for cigarette smoke. The ferry pulses slowly with the thump of diesel, the pressure of waves, the gaps between drawings in an animation style that has the feel of age to it. The wake of the bow does not disturb the sleepers at the prow. The ship is still now. It will be jaunty at the jetty, but here the night brings with it anticipation.

Naples. Not the Naples of memory. A father returning home, shows his daughter where he used to used to live. It's not there anymore. The subtitles say "they bowled it all" and one assumes it's a failure of idiom. To knock down (as a skittle), say, to demolish as if a game. The shadows lengthen on Vesuvius and the curled statues hold each other close. Each camera flash adds flesh. Flesh suffused with volcanic ash, flesh trapped within differently silicate glass. Traces, swabs.

Everywhere patterns. The black flood of foundations that bury and build. Leaps echo the coroners judgement. Animation sometimes only in intent, a stillness suffused with score. Marie Larrive's film is discomfiting, filled with silences that are painterly in their depths. Perhaps literally so, unblended colour in some places has the feel of cut-out but in others pastel skies and watercoloured winds evoke subtleties that rocks and stony faces do not. From the smallest bit of set and stance comes posture, posterity the goal of this endeavour. DNA a ripple in the water.

Gorgeous too. The suggestion of crystal clarity, subsurface shadow. A face half lit looks to the ceiling but there are no answers there. It is not a naivete, it is an arch simplicity, a crudity that belies its sophistication. The hard edges of the ferry move in ways the soft edges of faces do not. The leering skull is not just memento mori but moving memory.

Mael Oudin and Pierre Oberkampf's music sets tone, the bass clarinet of Etienne Cabaret a key element within it. All the musical titles (save two) take their name from colours, and one of the exceptions is Greenfinch after the bird. Verdone properly, the voyage to Napoli brings with it an Italianate rainbow from Azzuro to Giallo and beyond. Black painted backgrounds (literal, figurative) create a platform for an animation that is as colourful as the music but as clearly delineated.

Noir Soleil is "black sun", but in that the sense of the genre that shares that colour and the bleached Mediterranean coast. In Q&A at 2022's Glasgow Short Film Festival Larrive talked about how the story followed the style. Over years of preparation including early work with her musical collaborators she developed something that feels cogent, cohesive, compelling. While the film focuses on an element there is the feel of "a bigger story" to borrow from a question. Between parent and child are differences, not least the quality and source of the light in their eyes.

In a festival programme rich with the layering of texture, even the location of Naples with its nested crusts of history gives us that. In Dino and Victoria there are characters who by implication have stories untold. In development there had apparently been consideration of more of her life, studies, work, but the lack leaves greater space. A phone unanswered might say more than one whose ringing stops.