granitsa
Some interesting Flemish shorts at the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht this weekend, with mostly ingenious, violently funny plots and raw, explosive styles that are a welcome alternative to the kitchen sink drama that still seems to be the norm in Holland.
The exception to both was the short film 'Granitsa' ('Border') by Vanja d'Alcantara, a beautiful, poetic ode to travelling by train, filmed on the Trans-Siberian Express (possibly the most archetypical train journey in the world). The story is a kind of 'Brief Encounter' in body language, of a Belgian woman and Russian man meeting on the train and sharing a short, wordless romance.
Their helplessness in not being able to communicate is conveyed sympathetically by the main characters, as is their tacit understanding of the fleeting character of their relationship. But it's really the train ride itself that evokes their romance best, with its hypnotic cadence, the foreignness of all sights and sounds, the exhilaration of travelling across an unknown continent, the endless wintry steppes of Siberia gliding by, passing stations you can't decipher the names of...
The film is online here. See also this article, 'Strangers on a Train' (PDF, p. 32).