Comment about “Talk To Myself”
It is autumn, leaves are fallen down, a girl in a overall is in the garden and sweeps the greenery. The camera observes her monotone movements. She seems to be lost in thought. The view of this unknown woman amidst romantic autumn scenery is filled with poesy. The equality of her movements and the sound of the rake that paws over the ground unremitting, are transporting an enjoyable silence.
Then a childlike voice sounds and starts to talk. It’s not clear if it wood be the mind of the woman we see in the film, or the voice of a child that speaks to us from a far distance. The accent of the child awakes the vision of a desperately person. Her speech asks us riddles. She muses about her life, her fears and her pleasures. Her thoughts fly around like butterflies, settle down anywhere, get roused and find a new place to be for a short time. Best she would like to be a small animal, because animals are not funereally. But in the end she has to recognise that her dog also is not contented.
Many questions press down on her soul: “Why a child has to grow up? Why is a human thinking? Why do I not know what is wrong what is evil what is wrong? ...”. The course of time makes her afraid. In her vision the future is a frightening creature that is waiting in the dark of a grotto. To stop the time could be the solution.
“Soliloqiy” by Yingmei Duan is a film which evolves strong melancholic effect. Comparable to the tales of Franz Kafka, an eldritch feeling of dark nascience get confessed. A mysterious imminence seems to be in the air which the girl is unable to couch. Her simple hearted view in the world can not avert the disaster. But there is no sign of childlike unconcern, rather the whole world seems to weigh on her shoulders. It’s a cry for help that she exclaims. Questions she asks us and which we still can not answer. The woman in the garden is doing her work unflinching. Is it her who carries such sorrow in herself?
At the end she sings a nursery rhyme in which she puts all her pain.