Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Daguerreotype’ Attempts To Capture An Everlasting Image, But Has Little Soul [TIFF Review]

The old belief about photography and the native Indian — no photos, please, we don’t want our souls stolen — is vaguely explored in Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest movie about the essence of an image, death and the otherworldly. Souls aren’t so much stolen in “Daguerreotype” as much as they are at unrest and obsessed over. Using the near-obsolete photographic techniques as its core optical viewpoint, Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) looks through the daguerreotype lens to examine ideas of power and the illusions of control — intermixed in a story about ghosts, guilt and karma. But it’s a hazy, unhurried and cold study, that outside of a few chilling moments doesn’t disturb the head, heart or, ironically, the soul.

READ MORE: First Trailer For Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Daguerrotype’ With Tahar Rahim & Mathieu Amalric

“People take pictures of each other so they know they really existed,” the Kinks sang in 1968. This may seem like a glib, inappropriate reference for a psychological horror/thriller, but it’s a quick summation of the mania that dominates the secondary protagonist trying to capture the spirit of people that can’t live forever.

daguerrotype_03Daguerreotype — an early photographic process using an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor that might be described as artisanal photography today — is the process of choice for the aging and stubborn Stéphane (Dardenne regular Olivier Gourmet). A purist French photog who insists on using daguerreotype plates at all times, Stéphane is a true artiste, but also an inflexible pain to his clients. Models nearly tortured by his photos must stand still for minutes on end and so the artisan constructs a barbaric apparatus that holds the helpless model still. Sadistically, Stéphane nearly always uses his beautiful daughter Marie (Constance Rousseau) as his submissive subject and punishingly forces her to stand for more than 70 minutes at a time.

But this is actually the story of Jean (Tahar Rahim), the new assistant of Stéphane’s who comes from limited means and has few skills. Jean knows nothing about photography, but he’s the only applicant for a high paying job that curiously no one is interested in. After spotting a strange apparition, Jean becomes involved in the bizarre dramas of Stéphane’s family secrets, tragedies and dysfunctions.

It’s no spoiler to say the movie begins by revealing a family suicide and allegorically, characters are haunted with seizing an image, a moment, a visage in time forever. There’s also some half-interesting notions about stasis and immobility in Stéphane’s inability to move on in life, but these ideas never crystallize.

daguerrotype_01Kurosawa made his name with captivating J-horror in the nineties and aughts, but the director has lost his way in recent years, making well-crafted but ultimately dull movies that have failed to move the needle despite their acceptance to prestigious festivals like Cannes and more. With “Creepy,” Kurosawa’s previous film and legitimate return to psychological horror, the director failed to reconnect with the eeriness that marked his early work. With “Daguerreotype,” Kurosawa continues his new phase of thrillers, but the end results are decidedly mixed.

Kurosawa’s first film outside of Japan, all set and shot in France, “Daguerreotype” may seem like it’s taken the filmmaker out of his comfort zone, but his recent air of dispassionate cinema travels with him for better or worse. Clinical to the point of lifelessness, the picture has some strength in dread and disquietude. Kurosawa also has a sensibility for the elegant and alluring, but these qualities alone are not enough.

Somewhere within the slow-moving haze of “Daguerreotype” is a mystical picture about death and life and the haunting qualities of the everlasting image rendered in timeless photography. But Kurosawa, who has had trouble making a compelling picture for quite some time, loses the plot — jumps the shark even — in his last act where some preposterous turns just break the elastic that holds suspension of disbelief intact. Well composed but too detached, Kurosawa’s long-exposure is beautiful, but never illuminates the eternal he hopes to portray. [C-]

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