PIFF 2010: Installment V Woman without Piano
21 February 2010
Woman without Piano
dir. Javier Rebollo
Spain
Now this is a film, T-Bone. I hardly what to say about it, where to begin, much less end.
Woman without Piano opens with a plain, middle-aged woman, Rosa (Carmen Macha), and her husband, Francisco, in the front seat of his taxi. As he readies to head out to work, they discuss what she will prepare for lunch. Francisco is not so much distant as indifferent. There is not a hint of rapport between them.
Rosa spends the day removing women’s body hair, a little business she runs out of her home, and doing household chores. She has little interaction with her customers. The daily routine is uniformly drab. There is not a ray of light, no hint of brightness anywhere.
At midday Francisco calls to say he will not be home for lunch. Business is slow and he wants to keep working. That night, after Francisco goes to sleep, just before midnight, Rosa puts on a jet-black wig and bright red lipstick, takes out her suitcase, and walks away from her empty, meaningless existence.
A lot happens during this night. At the bus station Rosa pulls out a cigarette, only to be told by the security guard that smoking is not allowed. She steps outside for a smoke. A prostitute bums a cigarette, then a light, accepting both while acknowledging neither. A car pulls up and the driver, thinking both women are prostitutes, invites Rosa to come along, make it a threesome. Rosa explains she just came out for cigarette because smoking is not allowed in the bus station. It goes like that.
She returns to the station where she meets a young Polish contruction worker (Jan Budek) who finds meaning in life fixing appliances. They leave together when the station closes for the night and wander through the dark streets of Madrid. What little conversation there is between them reveals less about either. They go to a nightclub, get separated. On a narrow, dark street, Rosa inadvertently bumps into a young man and is berated by him and his friend. Through the night she drinks a number of small glasses of brandy, to all appearances unaffected by it, and in place after place is told that smoking is not allowed when she pulls out a cigarette.
The paths of Rosa and the construction worker cross again. They end in a hotel room. He is asleep in his white jockey shorts. Fully clothed, Rosa gets into bed beside him. When he awakens and opens his eyes, she kisses him, leaving red lipstick smeared across his mouth. I could only think of Aschenbach, played by Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s film version of Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice,” though the characters do not fit, the construction worker neither the older Aschenbach nor the beautiful Polish boy Tadzio, and Rosa something else altogether. I do not know what.
I also thought of the young Fellini as the film played out. Each scene is exquisitely framed and lovingly shot. The events portrayed are realistic, perfectly ordinary, yet imbued with a sublime sensibility, inexplicable, eerie, rendered extraordinary by so much that is not made explicit, and all that is left open ended.
Rebollo offers no concession to the viewer, no cheap rationale or explanation of motive. Escape is not in the cards. At the end, at the breakfast table in her home, Rosa says, “Francisco.” Her husband responds, “What?” That is it.
There is something here of what life is that touches us in a way we cannot quite fathom, some of us at any rate, maybe not Republicans or those tea party people, or a lot of other people as far as that goes, but some of us. This is a film.