Educational Media Reviews Online

“Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t exist unless other people are looking at you” says actor-writer Jane Arden to her companion as they walk in London while passersby react to the actors performing in a film they accidentally stumbled into. Two young women look surprised and excited to be have been filmed as they stare at the actors move by them. That fleeting flash in time acknowledges the existence of the actress as she utters her line and, by extension, of her character, also called Jane. It also recognizes the function of filming by providing an insertion of real people reacting to the filmmaking process rather than extras pretending to be part of the narrative and thus references the notion of reflexivity within the film. Separation is a film about a woman but it is also a film about a film about a woman. The remark made by both the actor/writer and character Jane highlights the concerns at the center of the film. A film doesn’t really exist unless it is being projected: it is simply an object in a can until it is run behind a lens with a light illuminating it from behind. A film actor is not an actor unless there are lights and running cameras to capture the performance.

Jane Arden, director Jack Bond’s writing and acting collaborator on several films from the 1960s through the 1970s, is being resuscitated through the power of having her work with Bond issued on DVD and Bluray disc with restoration by the BFI. The DVD copy viewed looked spectacularly balanced and crisp. Arden had committed suicide in 1982 and we are now being given an opportunity to re-examine her body of work under the direction of Jack Bond.

The first shot in the film is a kind of bridge to the subject matter of Bond and Arden’s previous endeavour, Dali in New York, in which Arden walked around and talked with Salvador Dali on camera. It is fitting to begin the film as an homage to surrealism with a shot of a clock face being shattered in reverse. The film itself depicts a woman whose world is being shattered by her own impending middle age along with the separation from her husband and her relationships with other men. The thread of surrealism passes through the film with allusions to shots and snippets of music reminiscent of Un Chien andalou (The Andalusian Dog, a 1929 collaboration between Dali and Luis Bunuel). The visual and narrative style of Separation fluctuates as well as it moves from a Cinéma Vérité, direct sound, documentary-type filming of a restaurant conversation to a Fellini, circa 8 ½, Grand-Guignol pool scene in which numerous nude women deal with emotional issues caused by men.

It is facile to point out the numerous points of reference and homage found in this film, such as Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) which influenced it on many levels including the duality of the female characters, the institution scenes, the reactions to television news but more importantly the integration of the most important reflexive aspect of the film, that of the disintegration or self-immolation of the filmic physical object. However similar their notions of reflexivity may be, both directors use different approaches in their films. In Separation, color footage is inserted in which the characters act in front of a projected film, sometimes black and white, while a frozen frame bubbles and burns then fragments and dissolves. In other scenes this bubbling representational frame becomes an abstraction that is projected onto the naked writhing bodies of the actors reminding us of the finite nature of the film and its embedded narrative.

Separation is a film of its period and the inclusion of music by Procol Harum who had Whiter Shade of Pale at the top of the music charts during the production of the film places it even more specifically in its cultural time slot. Providing opportunities for audiences to be able to see films that have not been accessible in 40 years allows us to contextualize the period with fresher eyes. This film is highly recommended for film studies, cultural studies, and music.