ilpositionokb Review of Antonia's Line

Antonia's Line (1995)

"A film which Celebrates the Infinite Possibility of Life"

[10/10 · 20 April 2004]

"Antonia's Line", winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture, explores themes of time, place, and memory with a light touch and an abundance of warmth. It's tender treatment of family and community registers affectionately in the viewer's hearts. The film opens in medium close-up of an elderly woman(Antonia) accepting her dying fate with dignity and quiet resignation, and then dissolves fluidly into a flashback of Antonia and her free-spirited daughter Daniele returning to the rural town of their ancestry. The picturesque village fondly recalls the odd townsquare of Federico Fellini's "Amarcord", complete with it's eccentric inhabitants. The villa boasts a howling woman named Madona: an overzealous priest(Who leaves the church because 'he can't reconcile his enjoyment of life with the churches' enjoyment of death'); a cynical intellectual named "Crooked Finger" who steadfastly quotes from Shopenaur; and a dim-witted young man with the unbecoming sobriquet "Looney Lips" to name just a few. "Antonia's Line", written and directed by Marleen Gorris("Mrs. Dalloway") celebrates the infinite possibility of life. The film, withstanding it's take on the afterlife("This is the only dance we dance") luxuriates in it's glowing affirmation of the present and the past. The main setting is the outdoors dinner table, where family and extended family measure their vision of life with laughter and temperance. Gorris views humanity as 'an intersection of perspectives', and some of the movie's best moments come from these subtle exchanges during dinner. "Antonia's Line" is filled with clever, fantastical imaginings, (Possible spoiler) from the loquacious grandmother rising abruptly in her coffin, to a well-aimed wing extending from an angelic statue. Throughout the film one sees more fanciful evidence and privately senses the director's fascination with the subversive filmmaking style of Louis Bunuel and his surreal mischievousness. (Possibile spoiler) Similar elements of fantasy pervade the film's final frames where the decease venture back and witness Antonia dancing joyously with her partner;a scene reminiscent of the finale in Fellini's "8 "1/2". Gorris then cuts seamlessly to the present(Antonia-aged greatly- dancing the same dance) where the film began. "Antonia's Line" ends in great insight with the lines: 'As this long tale comes to it's conclusion, nothing has come to an end. Something always remains,.........so life begins, without knowing where it came from or why it exists, because it wants to live'. The film's immodest achievements mark this as a major work from an ambitious and intriguing filmmaker. Kurt