Review: From Here (2010)

Directed by: Margot Schaap | 10 minutes | short film | Actors: Lidewij Mahler, Martijn Hillenius, Medi Broekman

“From here” leaves the viewer on two minds. It is inaccessible and yet it is. It is surreal and alienating, but also recognizable. It irritates and moves, a little. Perhaps looking a second time offers a solution, because after the first time the viewer has become quite entangled in the various, admittedly beautiful, images that are shown. The viewer will not understand the purpose of each scene, there is not enough guidance for that. But it may also be that it is not the intention at all to understand the entire film and that it is about the feeling that ‘From here’ conveys .

The main character is Sophie (Lidewij Mahler), who has to deal with the fact that her friend Gijs (Martijn Hillenius) broke up. What we see is not necessarily what happens or has happened: the film takes place in her mind. By digging into her memory, she goes back in time and little by little she gets closer to him. Gijs has ended the relationship by means of an e-mail, and she hears him read this e-mail (she has probably read the message so many times that she knows it by heart). Some images take place backwards, for example in the bar, where a glass of beer is poured out instead of full and a peanut pops out of a mouth instead of in it. Funny. The viewer is sometimes misled, but sometimes it is too obvious what is going to happen (for example, what is the content of the plastic container and how it got there).

A source of inspiration for Margot Schaap (who previously made One Night Stand film ‘Lynn’) was Sophie Calle’s exhibition ‘Take care of yourself, 2007’, the French entry for the 2007 Venice Biennale. Sophie Calle was dumped by her via email. friend and used this ill-mannered notice for an art project, in which she had several women analyze the message that ended with ‘Take care of yourself’. Whatever you may think of “From here”, vague or artistic or perhaps both, the film certainly stimulates curiosity about that exhibition.