Today
2014 · 3m · New Zealand
Directed by Prisca Bouchet
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Inside a South Auckland rest home, a sensory portrait follows the slow passing of a day for residents and staff.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A three-minute meditation on institutional care and temporal drift—fine, but it's doing exactly what a 'poetic documentary' is supposed to do, which means it's already been canonized a thousand times over. Bouchet's not interested in breaking the form; she's perfecting it, and that's precisely why she bores me.
Bouchet's sensory essay sits squarely in the lineage of Akerman and Reichardt—patient, spatially attuned, mining small human gestures for their accumulated weight. The editing rhythm and sound design work in strict conversation with each other, building a portrait of care and duration that feels both formally rigorous and deeply humane.
The choice to let ambient sound—breathing, fluorescent hum, the texture of daily routine—carry the emotional arc rather than score it is what makes this work; on a micro-budget, Bouchet trusted her ear over sentimentality, and that restraint becomes the whole film.