Petra Costa's Elena is a haunting and deeply personal documentary that attempts to piece together the tragic events that led up to suicide of the filmmaker's older sister Elena. Starting from the beginning, Elena gives a detailed and personal look at the family of Elena and Petra, daughters of a Brazilian radicals' living in Brazil under military dictatorship. Having the same dreams of becoming an actress that her mother did, Elena moved to New York City to pursue her dream, leaving her family and seven-year sister, Petra, behind. Over time, Elena's correspondence with her family trailed off, becoming despondent and distant. Years later, Petra herself becomes an actress, heading to New York in search of her own path, but also looking for answers centered around her troubled sister. With an aesthetic framework that can only be described as a fever dream of emotion and feeling, not structure, Petra Costa constructs a cinematic essay of her sister's life, being a beautiful evocation of loneliness, loss, guilt, grief, and happiness. Dreamlike and disjointed, Elena is a film rooted in emotion, being from the viewpoint of a woman in Petra Costa who is still trying to unravel the circumstances that led her sister to her untimely demise. Using lots of old home movies, letters, diary entries, and expressionistic photography, Petra Costa's film provides an intricate portrait of her older sister, but more importantly a detailed account of family trauma and the dramatic impact that the most seemingly small details can have on the psyche of the individual. Told through the point-of-view of Petra's pieced together memories, Elena paints a portrait of a woman in her sister that was deeply struggling with her perceived failures, which slowly wore down her psyche and confidence, being unable to breakthrough and realize her dream of being an actress and model. One of the more interesting aspects of the film is how it contrasts the vast similarities between mother and daughter, showing how at one point the mother's life was headed down a similar path of destruction. The film doesn't give many answers, being from the point-of-view of someone who simply can't have them all, but Elena does capture how fragile life can be, using the juxtaposition of mother and daughter. Elena struggled to find self-worth in an industry that showed little interest, but what makes the film great is simply watching her young sister, the filmmaker, attempt to understand such complicated aspects of life. At its best, Petra Costa's Elena is a film that attempts to comprehend death, being a visceral ballet of grief and guilt that by its sheer creation alone, becomes a beautiful soul-healing tribute to her sister that is a defiant act of creation and love in the face of trauma.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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