Dans les eaux profondes
2014 · 12m · France
Directed by Sarah Van Den Boom
Genres: animation, drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, mythic
Three people share an intimate, secret past: the 'lyse gémellaire,' a pregnancy anomaly in which only one of two fetuses survives, leaving each of them searching for a brother or sister they will never have.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Most people would've made this a grief narrative or a psychological thriller—Van Den Boom instead treats the absent twin as pure metaphysical absence, refusing the easy catharsis. It's weird and withholding in exactly the way that should piss off half the room.
The film's formal restraint—animation as meditation rather than illustration—positions it squarely in the lineage of poetic essay-films that treat the body as archive; the lyse gémellaire becomes a structuring principle for how absence itself can be rendered with precision and rigor.
The decision to animate rather than document this premise could've felt precious, but Van Den Boom commits to a single formal language—restrained, almost sculptural—that lets the audio and the visual silence do equal work, which is the choice that transforms a concept into something that actually breathes.
Reviews
Au bout du compte, « Dans les eaux profondes » développe avec une apparente sérénité un équilibre subtil, à mi-chemin entre documentaire et film intimiste, entre objets réels (ses décors) et dessin (ses personnages), entre bruitages travaillés et musique omniprésente. C'est en réalité un film de rupture, un film qui crie à la face du monde que du déséquilibre peut naître un équilibre.