Marie Anne
2012 · 10m · España
Directed by Pedro Valiente
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Marie Anne pedals in search of the sea as her life is shaken once more by change and rupture, fleeing echoes of another time under a different moon.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A cyclist pilgrimage to the sea wrapped in symbolist languor—it's the kind of contemplative European mood piece that usually puts me to sleep, but Valiente's refusal to resolve anything, his commitment to the rupture itself as the only truth, feels genuinely uncomfortable in a way most 'experimental' shorts never achieve.
Valiente positions himself in the lineage of structural poetry cinema and Tarkovsky's durational melancholy, but what elevates Marie Anne is the precision of its editing—how each cut refuses catharsis, how the bicycle becomes a formal motif rather than metaphor, situating the work within a rigorous tradition of cinema as witnessed time.
The decision to anchor the entire piece on the texture of pedal-rhythm and wind-sound rather than score or dialogue is what makes this work—it's a constraint that forces every frame into service, and suddenly a 10-minute bike ride becomes something you can't look away from.