bonjour cécile

Text by: Sofia Villalonga (Translated) Illus by: Ceci Ferraro

We are the lessons learned from our crises. We are what awakened in the most difficult moments, we are the wisdom that emerged after swimming deep in our emotional waters, we are the vapor that emerged after subtilizing our densest contents, we are the intelligence behind the story.

We are what remained after the triumphant fall, after deconstruction. We are the experience of being reborn, we are the resilience of having been able to. We are what lay behind so much fear, behind the rigidity, behind our clinging.

We are the cotton that lay behind the foundations. That soft presence, those crystalline waters that pulsed stronger, that were liberated, that became transparent.

We are the love that this situation attracted. Crisis is nothing more than the stage where everything awakens, the only moment where the truth can seep in, and this happens when we allow ourselves to collapse. What falls is not us but an old perception. An old way of defining ourselves, of seeing the world.

And in the gap between that small death, and at the same time, that new birth, lies what we are. A unique wisdom that always strives to live intensely, wearing few clothes, walking lightly, and doing what it knows best: moving, flowing, expressing itself.

That difficult-to-explain feeling that requires us to allow ourselves to fall in order to emerge. Because when we fall, at the same time, we win. We gain experience, we gain authenticity, we gain spontaneity.

And that's what it was always about: living a life aligned with your truth. And how will you know what your truth is if you don't dare to let it all go?

Y ahora que sos una estrella más en el cielo, o un pez más en el mar... no te quiero olvidar, nunca te voy a olvidar. Me urge, necesito, hacer una lista a modo de ayuda memoria de todo lo que compartimos juntos. Tal vez como una manera de aferrarme a esos recuerdos, ayudarlos a no desbanecer de mi memoria, como muchas otras cosas han desaparecido de ella, para bien o para mal. Me quedan esas fotografias de una niñez feliz cuando la vivia, cuando la compartia con vos en la casa de campo. Siempre considero que se me hace mucho más facil expresarme visualmente, atraves de la fotografía, una pintura o dibujo. Me considero media ‘chota’ a la hora de escribir jajaja. Es como una de esas cosas de las que a veces nos etiquetamos y nos decimos “eso no lo puedo hacer”, “no soy buena en eso”, “no soy lo suficientemente buena en lo otro”... pero sabes que? Bollocks! voy a escribir igual y como me salga nomás!  Acá va mi lista/ayuda memoria, sin ordén en particular.  Nadar bajo el agua por primera vez Tardes de bici libre por el campo Las picadas de valenti y los helados Vestido blanco y blazer negro Trabajar juntos Estudiar juntos Almuerzo en mi barcito preferido en San Telmo Veranos en Brasil Veranos en Miramar Caminatas por Caballito Caminatas con Delia, caminabas tan rápido y ella tan lento que le sacabas una cuadra de ventaja. Meriendas completas en Selquet Tantos partidos de San Lorenzo que vimos con Panchi y vos juntos en la cancha! Tus oleos, tu don con la pintura Que la unica música que te gustaba era el tango Cafe las Violetas La calle ‘Castro Barros’, la calle “Doblas” Lo que amabas la vista del Parque Rivadavia desde tu balcón Los miles de almuerzos en tu casa Las miles de cenas en tu casa De tus canciones y chistes verdes ajajaja De tu peinado ‘raya al medio’ De ese retrato tuyo de cuando eras joven y ‘pintón’ Esa foto 35mm que les saque a vos y Delia Siempre me decias ‘la mejor inversión es estudiar, aprender’. Tu apoyo incondicional, con todo, hasta con decisiones que tome que eran dificiles para vos, como haber decidido dejar Argentina atrás hace 7 años y lo mucho que me ibas a extrañar (Yo también te eché mucho de menos) Tu amor por los repollitos de brusselas, y el avocado con azucar! jaaja Cuando me enseñaste la ‘técnica perfecta’ para comer alcauciles. También amabas los merengues De cuando te metiste manejando en contramano en la 9 de Julio. De que trabajas hasta cuando estabas de vacaciones en la playa, siempre llamabas para chequear como iba todo. De tus sentidos y profundos abrazos De tu simpleza y generosidad y humildad De tu valentía y fortaleza de aceptar y vivir una vida con transtorno bipolar, que te tiraba para abajo y para arriba. De tu amor por las estructuras metálicas y los techos (siempre que veo alguna construcción interesante pienso en vos) De cuando me ayudaste a diseñar un lindo estudio con esas grandes estanterias de madera. Verte sentado en tu sillón de la mano junto a Delia (60 años juntos bancandose mutuamente) Me quedé con ganas de que pintemos juntos... te había regalado ese set de oleo para que pintes otra vez, pero al final creo que nunca lo tocaste Cuando ibamos al cine y te quedabas dormido roncando jajaja De esa hermosa casa que construiste con parque grande lleno de arboles. Ese lugar donde tengo de los mejores recuerdos de mi vida. Tu ayuda cuando tuve un amor a la distancia, Buenos Aires - Posadas Tus llamados a Londres para chequear como estaba Como entendiste todo, como me entendiste todo Almorzarbas en pijama con la servilleta a modo babero jajaja Nunca te vi hacer deporte! De cuando me quedaba a dormir en tu casa, y como amaba ese sillón con vista a esas grandes ventanas y al parque (vos nunca entendias por que no preferia dormir en una cama) Me decias que tenia grandes ovarios jaja que soy muy valiente por todo lo que hice Te gustó Martin, llegaste a conocerlo y me preguntabas... él me quiere? y él te dio un cariñoso abrazo y un ‘te quiero mucho Tito’.

‘Nobody’s daughter Haemon’, Hong Sang-Soo, South Korea, 2013.

Hong is one of those directors who like to explore human nature, and his pictures offer a lively collection of characters who are awkward, goofy and gawky the way only real people can be.

Noboby’s Daughter Haewon directly: appearances and disappearances. Haewon’s mother had never really been present in her life, yet her departure finalizes Haewon’s loss and marks her first encounter with the fact of someone’s utter, annihilating disappearance, bringing her to the realization that people can fade away and leave familiar world permanently. Her mother had not been there for her physically, and yet the space around Haewon was defined by her existence. The absence of parents allows her to experience a void.  Haewon often falls asleep, and some fragments of the film take place in her dreams, yet it is hard to tell where they begin or end—the director shoots dreams and reality in exactly the same way. Her encounter with Jane Birkin is obviously a dream: it is bookended with shots of Haewon falling asleep and waking up. The second time she drops off is in the library while reading a book, approximately in the middle of the film. Once again, we see her wake up, yet this shot marks a crossroads. The most plausible way to read the rest of the film is to conceive it as a dream since the final shot shows us, once again, Haewon waking up in the same library over the same book. Another telltale sign: before falling asleep, Haewon keeps a diary and records all the dates but afterwards she suddenly stops doing it. And finally, the entire second half of the film is a paraphrase of real events we have already seen in the first half—as it usually happens in dreams. Once again, just like the time Haewon walked with her mother, she finds herself by a wrecked fence that looks just like before, with the broken fragment in exactly the same position; she walks past the same cigarette butt, and meets a professor from the U.S. at the entrance to the same bookstore, in the same circumstances as in the very beginning of the film when she ran into a stranger: a casual encounter that led to nothing. The scene in the park happens all over again, with echoing lines of dialogue. Finally, the professor from the U.S. calls Martin Scorcese, thus mirroring the dream-sequence with another film celebrity, Jane Birkin.

Does this particular point matter? Is there a simple answer to what is dream and what is “reality”? Yes and no. Hong Sang-soo consciously includes fragments that evade unambiguous interpretation in almost every film he makes.  The book that Haewon is reading is The Loneliness of the Dying by Norbert Elias, a German sociologist who, also, belonged to no one—he was born in Wrocław, taught in Frankfurt-am-Main, fled from Hitler to London, then lived in Africa. He wrote The Loneliness of the Dying when he was 85, seven years before his death. This thin brochure, less than a hundred pages long, ends with a sentence which sounds like a summary of Nobody’s Daughter Haewon: “Death hides no secret. It opens no door. It is the end of a person. What survives is what he or she has given to other people, what stays in their memory. If humanity disappears, everything that any human being has ever done, everything for which people have lived and fought each other, including all secular or supernatural systems of belief, becomes meaningless.” Haewon fell asleep and never finished reading the book, but after all she once said  that there is no point in learning acting since simply living one’s life is more than enough. Perhaps, then, she has even less a need for books to teach her how to live or die.