Illumination

Ildutt, the protagonist in Illumination, is an anti-hero. He has difficulty functioning in today’s society and is balancing on the edge of a psychosis. A dislocating, gripping film about the boundary between ‘normality’ and slight insanity that haunts you long afterwards, partly thanks to the powerful, hypnotic acting of the unknown (but that won’t last for long) Clet Beyer and his ice-blue eyes. From the moment when Ildutt, a young Breton fisherman, gazes into the eyes of Christina, his grandmother’s nurse, he knows it for sure: he’ll do anything for this woman. He is recovering from a breakdown he went through several months before. He couldn’t cope with a fishing expedition to Scotland and fled into the Scottish Highlands. But now he is back in Brittany and prepared to fight for a relationship with Christina. He goes to see his psychiatrist and again takes the time and makes an effort to look well-kept. But he is also susceptible to the advice of a cult leader, with all the risks that entails. In her first feature, Pascale Breton provides plenty of room for the surroundings in which Ildutt is rooted. The breathtaking images of light on the sea and the coast at dawn sometimes look surrealistic. The landscape and the sea are just as rough, shy and elusive as Ildutt himself. (SdH)