A child sees Paris through a kaleidoscope of his own making; he looks at the city differently from his busy mother. The mother, a dancer, is late for her audition and drags the flu-stricken child behind her. Waiting at their destination is the director of the dance piece, a greying and magnetic artist, who whispers to the child about Plato’s allegory of the cave.
Alice Rohrwacher’s charming short film finds its author’s characteristic playfulness from a child’s point of view, literally tearing apart the Parisian scenery. The film’s philosophical background is connected to spectatorship. When Plato wrote that people chained in a cave see only shadows of reality on the wall of their cave, he was not talking about film, but Rohrwacher takes Plato’s ideology and runs with it to the screen. The result is hilarious. Both the director and the child in the film question reality and sensory experience; they suggest a different interpretation.
Rohrwacher, a two-time visitor to Sodankylä, has chosen another Sodankylä guest, the French auteur Leos Carax, to play the part of the grey-eyed director. He performs a captivating role as the mysterious artist-guru.
Kaisu Tervonen
An Urban Allegory will be screened before XXXXX.