Director: Sylvia Robyn Gionti
Running time: 2mins
Returning director Sylvia Robyn Gionti specialises in pain. In her three micro-films, she has covered the nagging pangs of addiction, the dull ache of bereavement, and most recently, the sting of rejection. Each film has moved at lightning speed to explore its themes, and each has utilised inanimate objects to foster empathy from viewers – but to very different ends.
The futility of quitting smoking carried with it notes of anarchic absurdity, as a cigarette complained to the camera about how it just couldn’t break free from nicotine. Meanwhile, the restless wooden figure in For your memory was lost in a sea of grief, as it mourned a departed partner. We can relate to the comedic frustrations of the first, or to the tiny articulated figurine feeling lost and alone in its now cavernous apartment after personal tragedy – and the ridiculous entity of the talking cigarette, or the forlorn figure of the wooden doll serve to emphasise those feelings.
Household pain is arguably the most emotionally raw of the three films, though, because the feelings it centres on are more ambiguous, and the way its figures drift in and out of it also underlines that. As Gionti narrates her own poem, about the emotional limbo she finds herself in after a breakup, stuffed animals – and particularly, a ragged looking rabbit – appear in different areas of a deserted apartment.
As Gionti’s poem takes the form of a barrage of questions, it becomes clear this is a very different kind of pain. In the previous cases, there was a form of certainty. We know that smoking is bad for us, and that we should give it up for the sake of our health – whether or not we can do it. We know that death is a final severance, and after someone is departed, we will need to find a way to live without them – though, again, that is easier said than done. But in the fallout of a breakup, we very rarely know anything.
We do not know how things would have gone if we acted differently in certain moments. We do not know if the end of the relationship was the right thing for us – sometimes it may be expected and even needed, but other times, when we are at our happiest, a breakup can come out of nowhere, and certainly not feel like it is ‘for the best’. And, because the other person is still alive, there is also – initially at least – the belief that they may change their mind, and that maybe this isn’t really the end.
Amid the minimalist cinematography and editing of Gionti’s super-short, the figure of the rabbit reminds us of this purgatory. Fluffy and visibly well-loved, the toy is a signifier of every warm and happy memory you could hope to have – and also a sign of having refuge and comfort in tougher times. But in the time after being abandoned, it has come to be an emblem of post-breakup uncertainty.
Initially in a prime position, the rabbit later crops up again in a pile of dust, under a vacant bed – while Gionti informs us that she no longer fears the dark. Now, it is “a comforting blanket” which removes all this signs of lingering and impossible hopes from her vision.
On a technical level, there is not much going on here. It does not appear that there has been a lot of effort put into the camera-work, of trying to figure out which angle might have emphasised the empty and lonesome house, to underline Gionti’s poem – or to light it in a way in which shadows might creep forth from the once-loving, now-ominous artefacts from her previous relationship, as if to torment the narrator further. Those might have been nice touches for a film that was made for the sake of making a film.
In this case, though, the unashamedly analogue feel (Gionti even sounds as though she has recorded the monologue on a cassette, which theatrically clicks to denote the end of the film) speaks to art that serves as therapy. A canvas on which to hurl the artist’s frustrations. To collect their thoughts and feelings – and process them, whether or not it could one day be consumed by others. It just so happens that this works as a rather beautiful, poetic insight into a form of pain we can all relate to at some point in our lives.
This film is unapologetically uncomplicated – and more power to it. Not every movie about pain in the human experience needs to be a towering technical achievement on every front – simplicity in form can make for an equally impactful delivery, and Sylvia Robyn Gionti has demonstrated time and again that she is an expert of delivering on those terms.