“Incessant buzzing of flies circling the dead but not gone past. Incessant abiding by the rules; marching to patriarchy’s tune, conforming to fit an unfitting mold. Incessant questioning, victim blaming. Incessant is our on-screen attack on incessant misogyny.”
The cinematographer Cheriana Resky of Incessant (2022) has represented her culture through cinematography to introduce more Indonesian representation. Resky then mentions, “We had so many references from legendary Asian and Asian American cinema like ‘In the Mood of Love’ by Wong Kar-wai, ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ by Zhang Yimou, and ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ by Rob Marshall.”
Resky states, “The camera work conveys to the audience the feeling of how depressed and sad Charlotte, the lead character of Incessant portrayed by Angela Lin, is.” She continues, “we keep the camera movement grounded to expose the beauty of the natural twilight lighting and to enhance the charm of the lead character.”
Sony Venice and Zeiss CP 2 were chosen to create the beauty of low light that Venice can handle. CP 2 came to get the optimal 1.8 T stop from the lens. The shallow depth of field was used to reflect Charlotte’s childhood trauma, and the impact of the ghost of her late grandmother, who haunts Charlotte even after her passing. The changing aspect ratio in each scene, along with the frame rate, and the color palette reflects the character’s apprehensive mindset and visually reveals her internal struggle. Keeping the camera steady for the first half of the film was a choice to contrast with the handheld approach taken in the last scene as to depict Charlotte’s character transition from a meek, indecisive individual to a wild confident revolutionary able to stand up for herself.
The film is currently in the film festival circuit and has been a success; Official Selection for Best Horror Movie at Sweden Film Festival and a Finalist Selection at the South Italy International Film Festival.
Kristyna Budinova, the director of the film, then explains in her statement, “The initial inspiration for the story of Incessant came from the knowledge of certain individuals who struggle to understand that no means no. How hard is it to understand consent? It was not long ago, only a few years back, when if a woman withdrew her consent during intercourse, the man was legally allowed to ‘finish’ without it being considered rape in the United States of America. If I tell you no and you keep going regardless, that’s rape. Simple as that, but apparently not. This is where the idea of a vindictive, vengeful woman’s spirit originated.
On the other hand, when writing the script, me and Cheri both wanted to pay homage to the older generation of women; our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who may have at times stood in our opposition; chiding us for wearing revealing clothes, for hanging out with boys, challenging our young feminist world views saying ‘boys will be boys’– with the intention to protect us from the pain they have had to go through; their way of love and so even though we may disagree we still love them back just as strong.”
Incessant is a taste of how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27042792/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2_tt_7_nm_1_q_incessant
