Can a new mother and artist deny her child those hugs that she herself received with such love from her own mother? Can her child be excluded from this right? The Stolen Embrace is how I see diversity: rather than a limitation, it is instead the thing that makes us special and unique. This story reveals my own act of not loving, of not conforming, of not adapting to the norm. For this reason, I captured Febe’s “beautiful indifference”, in the way the paintings are hung, in the details I borrowed from the noir aesthetic. Her long walk down the corridor, her first movements, closes a circle of non-feeling, bringing the protagonist into real life. As a whole, long clips alternate with extended frames of black. These shots precede sounds and obsessive references, repeated between the rooms, that allow the viewer to perceive Febe’s unease. Certain questions arise: Does the beauty of this woman, suspended among these sounds, by chance relate to post-partum depression? To a sense of alienation? To a borderline personality? I never reveal the entire figure at once. Febe’s nervous feet, her shirt held between her teeth, and the canvases and paintbrushes laid on the ground are all details that give us clues about what happens beyond these images on film. They are her way of living in the world, her way of being “normal”.
I did not make this piece to shock the viewer, but rather to invite him or her reflect upon what it means to live “differently” in a conventional world. At the end of the short film, the viewer reflects on how easy it is to miss the simplicity of a gesture or of a glance because he or she neglected to see a different perspective.