The film maker has a background as a visual artist, as painter to be precise. He does justice to that background here. In fact: there are few films that are so pregnant with symbolism, that are told so powerfully with visual means and in which a clear rational story is found to be so unimportant. The film revolves around a chance encounter between two pregnant women. One woman is Liotta, as in the title of the film. The other woman, wearing a red cloak, does not provide her name. Throughout the 12 hours that the film covers, she remains cloaked in total silence. Alongside apples and statues of Christ, children’s portraits play a major role as symbols in the film. The film maker says they refer to an approaching birth, but also to the fact that the woman in the red cloak lost her child and her husband in a car accident. The film maker is a follower of the thought that people’s urge to find paradise is linked to the individual experience they had as a fetus in the womb. The unconscious desire for this experience steers our everyday existence. For the director, this leads to certain conclusions that go without saying, for instance that the apples, the women and the statues of Christ are all pregnant. Even if you cannot or will not follow him in that, it remains a film filled with mystery and pictorial beauty. (GjZ)
