Nothing brings out intimacy visually better than a roll of Super 8 footage. The main strength of Giselle Lin's personal project “I Look into the Mirror and Repeat Myself” stems from that assumption. The film, in its essayistic, fragmentated form, tackles the issue of sibling connection and shared experience of growing up alienated from one's parents.
I Look into the Mirror and Repeat to Myself is screened in Locarno Film Festival
The characters (Lin and her actual sisters) discuss the memories of dealing with a demanding mother and an emotionally detached and psychologically abusive father. Five perspectives shed light on the dynamic between the siblings, the shared trauma, but also the individual experiences which vary due to favoritism in the family. “I Look…” is separated into segments, in which each of the sisters is given a platform to talk about her childhood memories. Sometimes in the form of a dialogue, sometimes a monologue, the film may seem like a collection of testimonies. Each of the sister's reminiscences adds to the story, sometimes blurring it, sometimes adding a detail allowing for the better understanding of the family. One of the anecdotes of some of the sisters' trip to the theatre with their father leads them to arrive at a harrowing conclusion: “I realized that he had children because he was so lonely”.
“I Look…” uses the figure of multiple narrators thus making the truth about the family dynamic more elusive and subjective. Each of the sister's trauma is expressed through different patterns, strange coping mechanisms and memories of bonding, as well as separation. This clear, yet somehow complicated structure makes Lin's film very nuanced in its depiction of the experience of growing up in a dysfunctional family constellation.
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The narration is reinforced by poetic visuals which more-or-less correspond to what's heard off-screen. This strategy works the best when particular scenes don't directly illustrate, but rather try to set a mood. Lin, who also shot and edited “I Look…” by herself, uses the hazy Super 8 footage, as if she was mimicking the hazy nature of memories. Images are presented in a stream of consciousness, and work the best at their most abstract.
“I Look” is a work demonstrative of a young filmmaker's attention to detail and emotion. The Super 8 film isn't used as a fancy vintage artifact, but rather, a visual tool emphasizing the elusive nature of the stories told by five sisters. With Lin's debut feature project “Midnight Blue Spring” picked up by Locarno Residency in 2022, there is probably much to look forward to from the Singaporean director.
