DAPHNE, a Chronicle of a woman in the jungle contemporary Criticism

Peter Mackie Burns and his writer Nico Mensinga portraying brilliant and sensitive and a woman in the city, DAPHNE, carried by the dark light d’Émily Beecham is a first feature of remarkable.

London contemporary, multi-ethnic and panting. Its night, its bars, the intoxication of the alcohol and arms unknown, of short nights and disenchanted. Sex like fast food- with the unique promise of the hangover and its aftermath-fast-paced jobs, of fries and of the wanderings twining in the hope of boredom until the next night, and the Grail of a new sip of alcohol. This is the life of Daphne, thirty-one years – but who prefers to proclaim on Tinder and those who cross to the glow of the neon lights and street lamps that she has only twenty-eight, it is more seller. A free life, not to say liberal, which it adapts with cynicism and panache but is not a substitute for morning sorry and lonely.

Daphne is great, the red hair blazing and the white skin, almost translucent. It is a tight-rope walker whose silhouette to grace burlesque disarticulated by alcohol and boredom hesitates constantly between strength, boldness, rebellion, and fragility… But in spite of his delicacy, and his skin, she wants it rough and thick, especially when mixed with the asphalt bubbling of the mix in london. Daphne wanders, escapes to life, keeps violently the last parcel of youth that lives and crawls and never belong to anyone. Neither girlfriend, nor the mother, nor wife, nor lover, Daphne doesn’t become cluttered empathy, it consumes and throws, convinced that any slip up on it, nothing prints, even the sadness.

Also, for her love does not exist. The intimate, not the carcass that it offers and that it is lagging behind, the real one, she flees like the plague, as a belief from another time. Her boss is married she loves in secret or with her sick mother to whom she gives no expression of weakness, it will never even be opened his heart. The bridge which connects to others and to life too, Daphne refuses to borrow since everything is ephemeral.

But one day, while she is doing a mundane race at the store indian in the corner, she is a witness to an assault just as amateure as violent. Here, it is necessary to act, to help, to rescue and to watch the horror in the face of the potential death, the other, humanity, and a fortiori the life, his… The flight before as eldorado is arrival at the destination. The carapace of Daphne cracked, it delves into a slow and deep examination of conscience.For their first feature film , Peter Mackie Burns and his writer Nico Mensinga portraying brilliant and sensitive and a woman in the city, and to come as soon as their first attempt to juxtapose in a scenario stitched a nice thick naturalist several themes. DAPHNE is first of all a private history, a portrait of a woman is very universal and contemporary worn by Emily Beecham (the performance of which bluffing spontaneity is all the more to emphasize that the actress appears in all the planes of the film), and a satire of the acute capitalist society. The density psychological remarkable character starts naturally at the service of the sociological dimension of the film, or even anthropological, and raises substantive issues such as the social and cultural diversity in large cities and capitalist, the ability to live and survive with modest salaries, but more importantly, there is the issue of the disenchantment linked to the consumerism and the markétisation of the world. Including relationships.

Two scenes (among others) remain in the lead, a first, which invites us to some political considerations, when Joe (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), patron of the restaurant in which you work as Daphne splits not without lucidity of mistreatment of the planet by bringing an artisanal cheese made at the other end of the world just to revel in the exotic flavors for a few mouthfuls; and then there was this scene where after a long night of alcohol-Daphne goes to a ultimate bar for a final glass, the waitress asks him what she desired, Daphne asked in turn what they have. Except that they have it all. And Daphne will not be possible to choose from. Basically, when everything is possible, no longer wants anything and when the desire is death, what else is there ? The emptiness, loneliness and nothingness.The declination of the satire, societal background is at infinity : free sex next day VS love single, rejection of the mother VS family close-knit, alcohol VS. sobriety, money VS. poverty… A sum of small scenes very well dialoguées and details in the narrative allow the film to take off of its dimension as a portraitist and open up to other realms revealing the will of the director to denounce the model of disembodied which gangrene in the deeper modern societies.

The purely visual is no exception, the photo is licked and avoids the pitfalls of the cinema English naturalist, exit the close-up shots and the complexion is greyish of England in the rain, Peter Mackie Burns takes us on a London very bollywood, reminding us of the image that the heat (human/urban) is never far away if we even consider it.

There is definitely something very literary in DAPHNE. One thinks of Zola. It is as much a chronicle of society as a photograph taken at a time T of the great History that a naturalistic novel. A first film that shows a world so controlled and refined that he’s back in your head like a story read to them. DAPHNE therefore extends beyond its support to remind us at every moment of our modern daily life.

Sarah Benzazon

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