Director: Tatiana Becquet Genel
Writer: Tatiana Becquet Genel
Cast: Zoe Bensimon, Julia Vidal, Valerie Moinet, Tatiana Becquet Genel
Running time: 1hr 56mins
A perverse ideological byproduct of capitalism is the cycle which objectifies human beings, while anthropomorphising objects. Dehumanising labour has been a crucial part of building an economy based on exploitation – the personalities or abilities of the bipedal cattle crammed into offices and factories must be downplayed, or paying them less than the value of their work soon becomes untenable – and amid the repetitive drudgery of daily work, the struggle to maintain food and shelter on minimal incomes, this ideological sleight of hand has left many of us feeling empty, incomplete, as though we are not fully realised humans.
At the same time, the goods and services we work to produce must be divorced from us – ideologically, painting objects as somehow independent from human relations, divorces us from them, to the benefit of the capitalist class, whose sole-access to those products will then remain unchallenged. So, things – products, organisations – suddenly become imbued with a special innate character, they are elevated to a status separate (or even above) the hands which created them. They are bound by their own laws, as ‘facts of nature’. Corporate personhood, or the legally enshrined concept in the US that a corporation has the same rights as a human being, hinges on this absurdity as a means to defend private property from criticism or even the meekest form of redistribution.
These phenomena subsequently laid the groundwork for the establishment of the modern consumer economy. Subjugated to the point of being unable to recognise ourselves as human, and forbidden through law and state violence to challenge the processes that have led us to that level of alienation, we are presented with a final, perverse choice: we can buy back some of that feeling of personhood by consuming those special, magical, reified commodities that we’ve learned to see as having their own kind of humanity.
Tatiana Becquet Genel’s feature film Third Eye examines life at the intersection of these two faces of reification. The main plot follows a young woman’s obsessive drive to build a career in photography, where she increasingly loses herself to the objects in her lens – while the story’s framing device sees a photography editor and a journalist retrace what may have been her final days, while struggling to determine whether her story enhances or diminishes the exhibition of her work. All three are at a loss to draw a distinction between the value of human life, and the life attributed to objects.
Aspiring photographer Christiana (Zoe Bensimon) approaches thorny editor Aurore (writer-director Becquet Genel) with her portfolio. The photographs do not seem particularly remarkable – a set of moody black-and-white images, often of naked bodies in passive or prone positions – but certainly don’t seem to provoke the savaging that Aurore proceeds to give them. Seemingly for fun, she tears the collection limb from limb, and states bluntly that Christiana has “no talent”.
Whether this is genuinely her opinion or not is difficult to determine, because, after insisting she was simply preparing Christiana for how ruthless critics would be with her work, Aurore gives her a task. She is to fly from Paris to New York, to house-sit for a property Aurore is trying to sell. In the day, Christiana should open the door for prospective buyers, but in the evenings, she is free to explore the city, and come up with something new to photograph. Is she simply looking for cheap labour to fulfil a task, under the pretence of giving Christiana a kindly opportunity to prove herself – having just monstered her work for no other reason than to diminish her self-esteem enough to say yes to such a thankless task? Or is she interested in her Christiana’s work, but not enough to pay for it – so she’s keeping her on a string in the meantime? I suspect it’s the former, but either way, she does such a number on Christiana that she finds herself drowning in self-doubt upon arrival in an alien city. Maybe she is worthless.
Every image Christiana’s antique camera picks up in the following days strikes her as empty, void of humanity, in part because she knows how she felt when she took the picture. Were someone to see the photographs as part of a famed photographer’s showcase, divorced from that knowledge, they would probably not see the same thing – and might attribute more value to the strange assortment of faces the lens has picked out on the streets of New York. But Christiana has convinced herself that she is deficient as a human being, and so she sees her end product as similarly lacking.
In New York, surrounded by a veritable sea of humanity, it might not seem like it should be difficult for Christiana to change that – to engage with a wider community to remind her of her own worth as a person – but of course, we’re all in the same boat. In cities of millions, we can go through a whole day feeling as though we are on a desert island, because that’s not how we are supposed to engage with our human side anymore. That’s what things are for.
Christiana finally finds the opportunity to fill the void in her personality when she claps eyes on a window display featuring a set of dummies. One in particular catches her imagination, with a particularly ‘lifelike’ male anatomy. Soon, the object which she names ‘Gabriel’ has become her muse, her sole confidant, her lover – and suddenly Christiana is convinced of her art again. Through engaging with the reified thing, she has invested in her own sense of worth, and rediscovered her sense of self. For a time, anyway.
The fantasy can only sustain itself for so long, and bereft of external contacts or communities, Christiana senses her opportunity is crumbling around her. As the situation becomes less and less stable, she pushes herself further into the world of the doll, chasing some of that magic which so briefly made her feel hole again. But however far she takes it, from erotic photoshoots with the figure, to dressing as a dummy and trying not to breathe, to going through the motions of bearing its child, material reality is dismantling the illusion – and leaving her with nowhere to go.
It is worth saying that so much of this story working as a vehicle for intrigue and introspection is down to Bensimon’s performance as Christiana. She gives a refreshingly authentic turn in the lead role, in a situation which likely would have seen a lesser-performer lapse into sensationalism or self-parody. But Bensimon’s performance is all the more powerful for her restraint – and instead of moving from being unable to emote, to lapsing into cackling, pantomime ‘madness’, her transition sees a glimmer of hope, of humanity, come alive in her, only to prove unsustainable.
This is important when it comes to some of the short-comings of the movie. At just under two-hours, it seems odd that there is still so much more room for fortifying the story from beyond Christiana’s perspective. The debate between Aurore – who is about to exhibit Christiana’s photographs with the mannequin, allegedly with the absent artist’s permission – and Fanny (Julia Vidal) – who has just discovered Christiana’s diary has no mention of any such agreement – feels under-developed, and unsatisfactory in its conclusions.
This is a problem, because as a journalist, Fanny should be giving us a voice of reason, a representation of normality which could help walk us through this strange and unfamiliar world we are in. But the chance goes begging, and with it, some of the gaps in the story which might have been played as intentional, become conspicuous.
For example, while it might be very well leaving Christiana’s story open-ended (it is unclear where she is, or what condition she is in now), Aurore still has plenty to answer for in monetising art resulting from her mistreatment and exploitation of Christiana in the first place. No journalist worth their salt should give up on that line of questioning, and the fact Fanny seems appeased by some nebulous line of debate about whether “truth” is ever knowable, or if “truth” diminishes art, and if that would really be in the service of the absent artist, deprives us of at least one voice of reason to help us process this story.
There is also an under-explored relationship between Christiana and her only neighbour, (Valérie Moinet) to consider. A recluse confined to her apartment, living in a wheelchair, the neighbour is also a retired photography obsessive, who seems intent on living through the actions of Christiana now. To what end, we never quite learn, and the relationship never has a conclusion, even when it becomes clear that Christiana will have to leave – leaving an awkward loose end in the middle of the story that doesn’t feel intentional. However difficult it might have been to film in her apartment (blocking is a real issue in the tiny space, to the extent it is hard to tell where the characters are standing), establishing how those two left things might have helped us draw our own conclusions about Christiana’s unknown whereabouts – and what she learned about herself in the process.
The blocking of the neighbour’s apartment also becomes a problem when scenes cut together rapidly, so that it feels like Christiana is walking from one end of her apartment, and straight into her neighbour’s bedroom. Alongside jarring editorial transitions like this, which feel rushed – as does some of the storytelling in the film’s framing device – it is also odd to find there is so much use of extended establishing shots. We are shown lingering imagery of the outside of the New York apartment so often that viewers might begin to see its Halloween lanterns when they blink.
That all might slightly undercut the cinematic splendour of the work at hand. Becquet Genel’s first career was photography, and it shows in every frame here – with imagery that is sublimely lit, layered and constructed at every turn. But all in all, aside from a few moments of my nagging, Becquet Genel the filmmaker has not only used the talents of the photographer to show us a breathtaking (and disturbing) new world, she has used that knowledge as the basis for a powerful examination of our socio-economic norms – the way we seek to realise our humanity through the divinity of inanimate objects, and the dangers of mistaking that for a long-term solution.
Third Eye might be one of the most interesting films I’ve received for review at Indy Film Library. It isn’t perfect, by any means, but Tatiana Becquet Genel has refused to play safe, and used the film as an opportunity to swing for the fences, asking uncomfortable philosophical questions about life – and indeed, her own career – in the process. That must be heartily applauded.