Director: Kimberly Burleigh
Running time: 7mins
Jealousy is an experimental animation, centring on a 3D model of a white house. The virtual camera wanders the deserted halls, occasionally coming to rest on minute details such as empty tea-cups, or fauna that has wandered into the building, such as an alarmingly large centipede which taken up residence on the dining-room wall.
The film is sound-tracked only by the deafening cacophony of the natural world. A constant chorus of croaking frogs is joined intermittently by the brief, electric screech of gnats hovering over the table on the porch. The only sound from the human world which interjects is the spectral hum of the lamp the insects have gathered around.
It might seem as though we are being treated to a view of a future in which human life – for whatever reason – has retreated from the face of the Earth. In the infrastructure left behind, animals are finding new worlds of their own in which to thrive – something which sounds idyllic, but wouldn’t be nearly as peaceful as we might imagine. ‘Nature’ in the Anthropocene age is defined as a convenient silence, empty fields and barren forests – but removed from our pointed assumptions, nature is actually anything but the passive and sterile environments we currently cultivate as ‘wilderness’.
In this regard, Jealousy might initially seem like a Herzogian treatise on nature. But as things progress, visual distortions begin to manifest in a way that suggests this is far from a state of reality, with or without humans in the picture. The white cloth draped over the empty dining table bulges, while the cutlery and plates set to empty places also begin to shift and warp – an effect that eventually even applies to the scuttling centipede still adorning the wall.
Exactly why is anyone’s guess. It might be that director Kimberly Burleigh is simply reminding us that what we are seeing – however nicely rendered – is a mere representation of reality, filtered through the lens of an observer who may or may not be reliable. It might also be that she is simply experimenting with the technology, pulling it in different directions to see what effects she can render, and what impacts they have on an audience.
Possibly backing that second theory up, there are things which seem more designed to elicit wonder from us, as much as the other images mentioned might prompt revulsion or wariness. For example, one eye-catching visual sees the paving stones in the garden outside levitate and assemble themselves into a beautiful multi-dimensional mosaic, before slotting satisfyingly back into place on the ground. But as nice as that is to see, it doesn’t necessarily feel like it fits in a coherent single piece. To the untrained eye (mine), this feels less of an experimental film, than someone experimenting with film.
On completion of my first watch, I delved into the director’s notes, and found why this might be.
The film is Burleigh’s digital interpretation of La Jalousie – a novel by French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet. That story centres on a set of settings and objects as observed by the obsessive narrator, who is convinced that his wife is having it off with the neighbour. The story sees the narrator fixate on details of the inanimate world, in an increasingly distorted manner; both suggesting that he is descending deeper into a dangerous obsession, and calling into question just how reliable anything he has to say is.
Looking at Burleigh’s film a second time in this knowledge, it works better – but I wonder how many people will get the core reference that brings it all together. Unless you are familiar with Robbe-Grillet’s work (and outside of literary circles I’m not sure how many people are), you probably won’t associate the Anglicised title of this film with his La Jalousie. To some people, that might not matter at all. The film works as an experimental piece because it doesn’t need to have rules or overt subtexts that tie everything together.
Unfortunately, for me on the first watch, I felt that outside of the context of Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy lacks direction – it doesn’t have the kind of perspective that could really motivate a wider audience to engage with it. And in cinemas, without access to a pause button, or the ability to replay the film after reading the director’s comment and Googling La Jalousie, it is very much outside of that context.
With all that being said, once I was brought up to speed with the film’s background, I enjoyed it a good deal more. It is also clear that Jealousy did big numbers at festivals, with a sheet of accolades as long as your arm. Maybe the rest of the world is just better read than I am?