Puffball

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, 2007, 120 min
Section: Tribute to Nicolas Roeg

Synopsis

Nicolas Roeg returns to feature film direction after a period of twelve years with a mystery thriller whose motifs and atmosphere are reminiscent of his most successful film Don’t Look Now, screened at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2006. Young architect Liffey (Kelly Reilly) moves to the Irish countryside to fulfil her dream – to renovate an old house. The neighbouring farm is occupied by Mabs (Miranda Richardson) and her family, along with her somewhat strange aging mother (Rita Tushingham). Mabs already has three daughters but longs for a fourth child, a boy. In order to achieve her objective, Mabs and her mother are willing to engage in what are most frequently referred to as “occult” practices. But it is Liffey who gets pregnant. Narrated at a more leisurely pace than Roeg’s earlier films, Puffball develops the unsettling theme of mysterious forces, slumbering in seemingly ordinary and familiar things. It is as if the structure of stones, buildings and objects, which have survived generations, have absorbed the stories and emotions of everyone with whom they have come into contact. The view of a white wall or stone in the forest suddenly changes – behind the outwardly harmless exterior of “dead” things lies a hidden world that exists in the kind of perception which is beyond human understanding. Puffball also contains graphic sex scenes typical of Roeg. If the film Don’t Look Now provoked a scandal in 1973 with its “convincing” sexual images, Puffball goes that bit further in its depiction, where the sexual act is captured not only fairly explicitly, but literally from an inner perspective.