Movie Ovid, New York by the Belgian filmmaker Vito Rowlands, who lives in New York premiered worldwide during the Brooklyn Film Festival.
An epic poem by a Roman poet Ovid serves as a basis for this film. In his Metamorphoses he wrote about Greek and Roman myths. Different parts of New York state (including the town of Ovid itself), shot at different times of the year, constitute Ovid, New York an anthology in seven chapters varying in tones and genre.
And as they do so you see how they’re all connected, it’s like one chapter is talking to another chapter or something, that’s why it’s fun. The film looks wide screen format, mostly shot on now discontinued old super grainy Agfa film stock with its bleeding colours, dirt and blemishes left in along with lens flare aberrations nothing like anything that’s shot with super sharp clean digital technology nowadays.
First we see a lonely hunter in a wide wide landscape hunting deer in the woods. Which invokes a Greek myth of Actaeon who was turned into a deer after spying on the goddess Diana bathing in park which corresponds to third chapter which has two talking sculptures (Hippolytus and Diana).
The second is about beautiful stage actress (Tina Makharadze) rehearsing Medea on stage. It doesn’t have infanticides but it tells about vengeful woman and her cheating husband. Fourth chapter is narrated in Japanese, shot in grainy hand printed monochrome picture.
Fifth one features empty cicada shells and talking praying mantis urging entomologist to kill her pestering mother. Sixth tells traveling Hoover vacuum salesman who drowns himself in bathtub full of green very much alive caterpillars in motel room. And last one is about two bickering sharply dressed ferrymen twins advising Belgian actor (played by director Rowlands himself in inadequate costume and make up) dressed as Death from The Seventh Seal.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is filled with myths and mythic creatures, animals, humans, gods and demi gods shapeshifting into one another in often bloody violent ways. These ancient tales transform into Rowlands’ Ovid New York reflecting the world we live in today, chaotic and turbulent but with a lot of humor. I didn’t expect it to be this funny: especially chapter with talking homicidal mantis.
The chapter ends in hilarious blood-soaked dance in field which reminds me of non-sequitur opening dance scene from Bong Joon-ho’s Mother. It also plays very playful with its medium: using outdated technology 8mm, 16mm and 35mm shot on obsolete film stock the film gives not only its unique look on screen but also reminds us viewers about tangibility of film and what cinema has developed into these days being described as ‘contents’ or having ‘that Netflix look.’
Beautiful soundtrack (by Jordan Dykstra) is very close to works of great Michael Nyman (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers, Piano, Ravenous). Also Rowlands knows his cinema history well taking references anywhere from Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence to Peter Greenaway, Ingmar Bergman and like I said before Bong.
In Ovid, New York, a film that is truly unique and unlike anything else I’ve ever seen before (people speak English, Japanese, Georgian, Flemish you name it), the clash of tone, texture and sound is all about change; it’s not chaos but harmony. This movie blew my mind and I’m so excited to see what Rowlands does next.
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