The Ring Finger
Take a cult Japanese novella, a French woman director, a Hamburg setting and possibly one of the most beautiful women in the world and you have some of the ingredients that make up this mysterious fantasy film.
Based on a novel by Yoko Ogawa it is transposed to unnamed European location, where they speak French. The setting is contemporary but somehow timeless, which further enhances the overall mystique of the film.
Iris (Olga Kurylenko) works in a soft-drink factory and loses the tip of her ring finger in an accident. After the incident she moves into small hotel on the city's docks, where she shares a room with a sailor, whom she never sees. Whilst exploring the area, looking for work, she comes across an institution that is looking for an assistant to help with office tasks and the laboratory's preservation work. Nothing is ever really explained about what happens in the laboratory, except there seems to be an emotional healing process attached to the clients leaving their personal items for the enigmatic doctor to treat. The doctor gifts her a pair of pumps, which fit her feet like a glove, with the instructions she must always wear them, giving the film shades of The Red Shoes, which leads Iris into a relationship with her Svengali boss.
There is a real dreamlike quality to the film. Characters wander in and out without anything ever being explained as to who they are, leaving items for the doctor to preserve, and others leaving cryptic messages for Iris, who drifts through the story as an innocent, beguiled by all she sees until she falls under the doctor's spell.
Although so much of who, what and why are left unanswered it doesn't seem to matter. The film's visuals, and Iris's beauty, are so enticing they draw you into their dream logic without question. You just enjoy the moment and when it ends you want it to start again in the vague hope you will understand it next time, but without caring if you don't.
The Ring Finger is showing as part of Best of the Fest on Sunday August 27 at 10:15, Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
Based on a novel by Yoko Ogawa it is transposed to unnamed European location, where they speak French. The setting is contemporary but somehow timeless, which further enhances the overall mystique of the film.
Iris (Olga Kurylenko) works in a soft-drink factory and loses the tip of her ring finger in an accident. After the incident she moves into small hotel on the city's docks, where she shares a room with a sailor, whom she never sees. Whilst exploring the area, looking for work, she comes across an institution that is looking for an assistant to help with office tasks and the laboratory's preservation work. Nothing is ever really explained about what happens in the laboratory, except there seems to be an emotional healing process attached to the clients leaving their personal items for the enigmatic doctor to treat. The doctor gifts her a pair of pumps, which fit her feet like a glove, with the instructions she must always wear them, giving the film shades of The Red Shoes, which leads Iris into a relationship with her Svengali boss.
There is a real dreamlike quality to the film. Characters wander in and out without anything ever being explained as to who they are, leaving items for the doctor to preserve, and others leaving cryptic messages for Iris, who drifts through the story as an innocent, beguiled by all she sees until she falls under the doctor's spell.
Although so much of who, what and why are left unanswered it doesn't seem to matter. The film's visuals, and Iris's beauty, are so enticing they draw you into their dream logic without question. You just enjoy the moment and when it ends you want it to start again in the vague hope you will understand it next time, but without caring if you don't.
The Ring Finger is showing as part of Best of the Fest on Sunday August 27 at 10:15, Filmhouse, Edinburgh.
posted by Chris Patmore at 1:02 pm
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