Written on Water is a motion picture docudrama. Choreography and direction by Pontus Lidberg. Original recorded music by Stefan Levin and pianist Magnus Svensson playing classical music solo. Stars Lidberg , Aurélie Dupont, Alexander Jones, Stina Ekblad, Sarawanee Tanatanit, and Leslie Caron. Directed for TV by Martin Nisser; edited by Lars Gustafson. Produced by François Duplat, Amaury Lafarge, Pontus Lidberg, and Mary Ellen Obias. Video is in letterbox with 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: B+ with the ‽ designation.
This is an esoteric, puzzling, scrambled-plot movie about the lives of dance artists. One critic asserts that Lidberg’s erraticism results in a “dance movie adrift.” Lidberg defends his wild gyrations saying that “subjective perceptions become reality.” That’s too esoteric. I don’t need a throughplot. I enjoy the movie as a collage of scenes that show what kinds of things that can happen anytime a dancer goes to work. Of course, not everything that could happen will occur in a single gig—except in this wild movie.
Before we get into screenshots, let’s consider some external aspects of Written on Water:
I think this is the first kickstarter project leading to a classical art Blu-ray. That’s right—in addition to several traditional financial supporters, Lidberg raised over $40,000 in small contributions.
Lidberg doesn’t have a regular company. He puts together an ad hoc team for each project. He then records at the convenience of the artists who will help! This movie is in part a swan-song for older dance and theater pros who aim to prove that talent never dies. In addition to Lidberg, about age 44 (in 2021), the show stars dancer Aurélie Dupont, about age 48, actress Stina Ekblad, about age 67, and actress/dancer Leslie Caron, about age 90! The youngest star would be dancer Alexander Jones, whose age is a state secret. Many of the multitude of souls that work on a movie for Lidberg donate time or work for food—all out of elder compassion or youthful desperation to get a credit.
This project resulted in 2 works of art: our movie and a dance piece called Siren you see being created in the movie! Siren premiered in 2018 in places like the Joyce Theater in Manhattan. So Written in Water is partly a documentary about real events + partly Lidberg’s collage.
The film casts water as a star. Water is rarely seen on the dance stage (slip-and-fall danger). But it’s a nice metaphor for all that is vital, flexible, and beautiful in Lidberg’s collage. (There is an aquarium on stage.) The first and last images in the movie show Lidberg shooting an ocean with a film camera. Lidberg was not the photographer for this title. But I gather the movie was shot on film and not as a digital file:
Lidberg (Karl) is also a dance character in the movie. He’s on your right in the next screenshot below, which appears at the beginning of the movie. On your left is Alexander Jones (Giovanni), who is in real life a principal dancer with Ballet Zurich. The language of the movie is English, so there are no English subtitles. Ergo, German subtitles. Giovanni meets Karl and says, “I’ve already heard a lot about you.”
Eventually Karl and Giovanni will have a fling. And as we will see later, the fling may also be an affair:
The rest of the stars are women. Below on your left is Pauline (Leslie Caron), manager of a dance company. She is introducing Alicia (Aurélie Dupont), a visiting choreographer, who will create a new piece with the company. Pauline says,”Alicia will explain in her own words what the project will look like.”
You probably don’t know Leslie Caron. She was a celebrity dancer and movie star, and next below is what she looked like in the Golden Age:
Siren is based on Homer’s tale of Ulysses and those terrible temptresses trying to lead sailors to their deaths on the rocks. The project has a small budget. Below is a crude model showing an aquarium (the Mediterranean Sea) and a sail on our hero’s boat. The actual props will look better than this:
The show depicts as realistic a depiction of of dance-making as you can get. That’s because what you see is the actual making of Siren by it’s real choreographer. One luxury the company gives Alicia is a piano player from the beginning. This must be the worst possible gig for a pianist: beautiful Schubert gets chopped up—”music-stop-music-stop”—ad nauseum! The rest of the music for Written on Water is going to be an electronic piece by Stefan Levin, which is not finished yet. So the dancers learn many steps in silence:
Alicia is definitely in charge. But she works as leader rather than tyrant. You see how in modern dance the dancers themselves can contribute to the choreography:
Next below see Sara (Sarawanee Tanatanit). You might think Sara playing the queen of the sirens. Wrong. Since this story is written in water, Sara is Ulysses! Below she is bound while the sailors have their ears plugged with wax:
The making of the boat is pretty. The first time I watched this, I found myself more interested in Siren than in Written on Water:
This title is full of gorgeous images from director of photography Nisser like the shot below showing a swank living room. I love the vantage point, the dog with his snout directing our attention to the actors, and the contrast of the cool, pristine, anonymous aura of the room to the grimy, dilapidated dance studio. In the room we see Dupont and Lidberg engaged in an intense conversation. Are they Alicia and Karl or two different people? What is the relationship between them? Are they reading a script or discussing something that has happened?
Dupont ponders the unsettling aspect of dancing where people are thrown into intimate physical contact while still strangers. She says, “We feel each other before we are acquainted.”
And here is Lidberg reading, “His every step was painful.” Not to worry. No need to tie this scene into logical connection with the rehearsal of Siren. You are allowed to come up with several interpretations of what you see. This is a collage.
And now we have a different theme in the collage with Alicia, Giovanni, Rachel, the company costume maker. Rachel is played by Stina Ekblad, the famous Swedish film actress. In the next shot below, Rachel asks if Alicia approves of Giovanni’s costume, “Do you like this on him?”
Later we learn that Rachel and Alicia are old friends. Rachel sees that Alicia is disturbed. She asks below, “You seem distracted. What’s going on? Is it Giovanni?
Rachel is right. Alicia confesses she has a crush on the young dancer. This is not exactly an unusual event in the world of dancing, but the twist is that now the superior with the ethical problem is a woman rather than a man:
That’s enough about the collage aspect of this title. Maybe more important than the libretto is the striking beauty of the both the music and the video images. Stefan Levin provides perhaps the best original pre-recorded electronic score that I have heard in a dance film. Lidberg managed to work in some especially dramatic locations like the ruins of Havana. See for example the shot below of Amelia’s devastation over Giovanni:
Perhaps the most haunting image of all is Alicia’s walk down this mysterious path:
How many phony-looking dance scenes have you seen in movies? Well, if you put 20 professional dances in a night-club and cut them loose with throbbing Stefan Levin music, you get the best dance scene ever! You could justify the cost of the title just to get this 15 seconds:
And since this was written on water, there has to be clever water shots like the dream scene below:
A lot of distinguished folks are involved with this eccentric title. Print critics had trouble with it, but I think this review gives the aggressive libretto a fair shake. The price seems right if you’re inclined to give this a try. My biggest criticism would be that Dupont doesn’t have impressive chops as an actress. The language of the title is English. Dupont knows English, but it’s not her native language. She speaks here too fast with a rather thin, pinched tone. She would probably be much more convincing speaking French. But with the international cast used here, English may have been the only vehicle. I’ll give this a B+ with the‽ warning.
Here is a decent official Vimeo trailer:
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