Letters

Bluesky

Letters become not just a correspondence between a mother and daughter at a fixed point in 2014 but a conversation between the past and the present in Aysel Küçüksu’s simply shot but heartfelt short.

In it the director sits across from her mother on a bed with the letter she sent her a decade ago, which she then begins to read to her. Afterwards, in response, her mother reads her reply. The effect is to create an almost double intimacy.

Letters, by their nature, are one of the most private and engaged forms of communication we can enter into. They require the setting aside of time, thought and energy to achieve and, more often than not, move beyond the sort of text message or email pleasantry turf into deeper and more complex areas. They’re also not something, once sent, that we ever expect to encounter again, seeking only a response, not their return. This is what makes the exchange between mother and daughter carry weight, since they are not only struck by the words being read to them but by the words they themselves have written, taking them back to a place left behind.

In the case of the director’s mother, the experience could even be said to hold a third layer, since within her letter she recalls an episode from her childhood that is brought fresh to mind when encountering what she has written again. Cinematographer Shila Liv Sloth’s camera is a third party in the conversation, shifting gaze between mother and daughter with care. As just a single camera is used, the focus remains tight on one woman or the other and Sloth’s skill in anticipating when to move from one person to the other is a large part of what makes the film successful.

The inclusion of some home video footage of Küçüksu as a child, underscores the sense of the past meeting the present and adds some variation, although perhaps footage from the time period when the letters were written would dovetail more smoothly. A little more context on where the filmmaker was at the time when the letters were written would also be welcome but Letters, which is playing in the short competition at Sarajevo Film Festival is nonetheless intimate and effective.

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