Splendid Isolation

It was the coronavirus pandemic that gave filmmaker Urszula Antoniak the inspiration for Splendid Isolation. “Death came close to me”, she writes in her director’s vision. “I had been living in the shadow of the death of my spouse for some time, or rather: in fear of death. The pandemic confronted me with this.”

She processed this into a minimalist, allegorical film with a minimal budget, about two lovers who have to rely on one another on a deserted island. Why the couple move into an empty, modern house there, why they dream of and long for touch, what exactly they are running away from – and what the purpose of the soundproofed cellar is – Antoniak leaves to our interpretation. She shows the interactions between the two solitary lovers and the roles they fulfil in dizzying drone shots. Anna protects Hannah, if necessary with a gun. What remains, is a pared-down story of hope and denial, fear and guilt.