Chloé Van Herzeele
2019 · 17m · France
Directed by Anne-Sophie Girault, Clémence Bouchereau
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In an underground space, old Chloé screens films and shows a journalist the galleries where her silver-film collection sleeps, as the descent pulls them into her altered world.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise reads like a gallery brochure until it isn't—and yeah, the slow collapse into Chloé's subjective space is genuinely disorienting, but it feels more like formal *exercise* than genuine subversion; the weirdness serves the thesis rather than rupturing it.
A precise descend into essay-film tradition: the archival impulse, the space as character, the journalist's embedded perspective all working in careful concert—this is the kind of formally rigorous gallery piece that earns its 17 minutes through considered editing and a clear lineage back to structuralist cinema.
The decision to use the journalist as a grounding perspective while the mise-en-scène slowly denies them solid footing is elegant, and there's a particular edit or sound choice (likely in the descent sequences) where the budget constraint becomes invisible and the disorientation feels inevitable rather than performed.