The Girl and the Spider

Over the course of two days and one night, as Lisa moves out of the apartment she has shared with Mara and into the one where she will live alone, many things will break and some will be repaired. Like the titular spider’s web, the film has a perfect, fragile geometry. Set almost entirely in interiors, it is also an involuntary summary of the paradoxical age of the pandemic. The transition from one abode to another, and the energy that is released between one story ending and another beginning, puts the entire ensemble into an altered state of grace. This creates a sort of seductive jam session, replete with the evocative presence of totemic animals. It is, as they say at one point, “As if a secret force were holding everything together”. This weird magnetism comes from the Zürcher brothers’ organic writing and directing. Once again, framing, scale and deep focus are all essential elements of their cinematic language, while the editing orchestrates themes and figures at a relentless pace. This leads to constant formal tension between movements, gazes, sounds, colours and details, which all support each other as if part of a dizzying house of cards. (Berlinale)