Download Film Elisa And Marcela 'LINK'
Jeanmarie Morock
The film begins in Argentina in 1925. Initially, we follow a young woman who seeks out an older woman outside of Buenos Aires. The older woman begins to recount her life in turn of the century Galicia.
A row over whether films produced for streaming platform Netflix should be shown at the Berlin Film Festival has overshadowed the premiere of "Elisa & Marcela," Isabel Coixet's tale of two Spanish lesbians.
Independent arthouse cinema operators in Germany wrote to German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters and Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick on Monday demanding that the film be withdrawn from the competition.googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1499653692894-0'); );
This is the Sunday Edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. If you like this type of thing, subscribe, and share it with your friends. A paid subscription gets you more writing from me and will help me keep this newsletter afloat. Consider going paid! The following contains major spoilers for both films in question.
Coixet's film is intriguing because out of all the lesbian period pieces out there, it is one for which there was very little firsthand evidence to draw from. We do know that Elisa and Marcela were legally married in 1901 and subsequently arrested, but we know nothing of what became of them following their escape to Argentina. Whatever written communications that may have existed between the two women have since been lost. We do know that their marriage was never annulled despite their capture, so they remained married for as long as they both lived.
Letters are a cornerstone of romance in each film. They serve as a fossilized archive, a legacy of a romance frozen in time. To be sure, letters are central to most historical romances and historical films and series in general, because they were the most common and accessible form of communication for many centuries. But for those invested in lesbian and queer history, letters take on an added significance, as they remain one of the key pieces of evidence that lesbians have existed for as long as the written word has. Anne Lister (the titular Gentleman Jack), for example, was a prolific letter-writer and journaler, and her writings are the basis for much of the show. Arguably the most famous sapphic letter-writers are Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, whose extensive letters have even been immortalized in the form of a Twitter bot. And let us not forget all those love letters between medieval nuns that prove that they were doing a little more than just sweeping up and praying to God.
Obviously, photography is the medium of filmmaking as well, and both films are highly aware of the advantages of this visual medium. For Elisa & Marcela, there was very little in the way of a material archive for Coixet to draw from. The film uses the lyrical, poetic capabilities of filmmaking to weave a story that is based not in absolute fact, but in emotional intensity and resonance.
Within this genre, if you can even call it that, there is a smaller sub-genre, which includes narratives based on real-life women and queer people, many of whom were previously unknown (or under-discussed) by the general public. Projects like the popular BBC series Gentleman Jack, which follows 19th-century lesbian Anne Lister, or 2018\u2019s Vita & Virginia, or even Paul Verhoeven\u2019s blasphemous lesbian nun romp Benedetta, all work to flesh out narratives that previously existed only in a fragmented form. The best of these films and series are able to creatively fill in the gaps, creating presence where there was previously an absence. By recovering these histories, importance is then retroactively signified.
While there are numerous films I could pull from in order to illustrate these points, I will focus on just two. The first film is 2019\u2019s Elisa & Marcela, which was directed by prolific Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet. Elisa & Marcela is based on a true story that revolves around the first recorded same-sex marriage in Spain, which occurred in 1901. The story follows the titular characters as they meet as schoolgirls in Spain just before the turn of the century. They develop a very strong affection for one another, but are separated when Marcela gets sent to boarding school.
This vacancy presents a beguiling problem for Coixet to solve. As Sharmane Tan writes in Girls on Tops, \u201CIf lesbian existence is plagued with absence, then Coixet\u2019s work self-consciously indicts itself in this precarity by persistently reminding us that history is fragile, prone to mishandling and abuse.\u201D Elisa & Marcela is quite lyrical and poetic, choosing to portray the relationship through the imagery and language of dreams rather than facts. The film wasn\u2019t especially well-received by critics, many of whom seemed to think it lacked some sort of emotional resonance or necessary passion. (I will add here that certain male critics had similar things to say about Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which to be fair, is the better film of the two.) Regardless, what the film occasionally lacks in momentum it makes up for in its arresting desire to catalog a love unspoken.
1999\u2019s Aimee & Jaguar is a very different film from Elisa & Marcela (despite their titular similarities), but the two films share a commitment to artfully filling in the gaps. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name, the film follows a doomed love affair between two women in 1940s Berlin. Lilly Wust is a housewife with four children who is married to a Nazi officer. Felice Schragenheim is a young Jewish lesbian and a member of the underground resistance. Felice begins pursuing Lilly after a chance meeting, and the two women unexpectedly fall in love. Throughout their courtship they constantly exchange letters, referring to one another as their alter egos \u2013 Aimee and Jaguar.
Unlike Elisa & Marcela, a significant amount of source material existed for the producers of Aimee & Jaguar. In the 1990s, Lilly sold the rights to her love story to journalist Erica Fischer, who went on to write a book about the couple. She had their numerous letters, Felice\u2019s poetry, and Lilly\u2019s own memory of events to draw from. The film was then adapted from Fischer\u2019s book. Though ravaged by grief, Lilly never forgot Felice, and remained hopeful all her life. As she told a journalist in 2001, \u201CTwice since she left, I've felt her breath, and a warm presence next to me. I dream that we will meet again - I live in hope.\u201D
The archive of letters \u2013 whether material or imagined \u2013 was a significant part of the filmmaking process for both films. For Coixet, she had very little to work with in the way of physical evidence. A book was written about Elisa and Marcela in 2008, but we still know very little about the thoughts and feelings of the women themselves. As an exercise, Coixet had actors Natalia de Molina and Greta Fern\u00E1ndez write letters that might have been passed between the two women. Coixet found the practice so intriguing that she incorporated the letters into the film. There are several sequences that show Elisa and Marcela, each facing the camera, as they read the letters they wrote to one another during their three years of separation. In this way, Coixet created a history that has been lost to time, or may have never existed at all.
In Aimee & Jaguar, the archival material at director Max F\u00E4rberb\u00F6ck and writer Rona Munro\u2019s disposal was much more extensive. Though she shared the letters with Fischer during the writing process, Lilly always kept Felice\u2019s letters close by. For as long as she lived, Lilly kept Felice\u2019s letters in a suitcase and wore its key around her neck. \\\"I open it every August 21 [the anniversary of her departure] and indulge myself with memories,\\\" she told The Guardian. In the film, such memories are brought to life, immortalized once more within its frames.
Indeed, what is most compelling about both films is how they highlight the joy these women were able to fight for, hold on to, and envelop themselves in, despite the circumstances. In Aimee & Jaguar, the day Felice was arrested by the Gestapo, she and Lilly have a picnic at a lake before they are intercepted on their way home. The moment prior to Felice\u2019s arrest, like many others in the film, is filled with lightness and laughter \u2013 not something one would expect from a love story in 1943 Berlin. Elisa and Marcela\u2019s story contains many of these moments too. There is the first act of the film, where they fall in love as schoolgirls, with Marcela purposefully forgetting to bring an umbrella so Elisa will be \u201Cforced\u201D to help her dry off in the bathroom. Then there is the mirthful moment when they go to the beach and Marcela convinces Elisa to go swimming even though she is afraid of the ocean.
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