There's no way of classifying Footprints, I know many have gone for calling it giallo, and perhaps it's best to approach it as that having never seen it, but really it's not genre fare. Much better to compare it to the likes of Solyaris, an art-house movie using genre trappings. However there's a real interbreeding of genres in Footprints, which gives it a feeling of incredible uniqueness.
It's about a woman of a certain age, Alice, who is an interpreter for a large multinational governmental body. Her whole life we feel is a masterpiece of repression, a Freudian version of Rococo filigree. A friend tells her that there is something truly inhuman about how she dedicates herself incessantly in the pursuit of perfection at a job she hates. This of course is a sign of someone for who inner dams will eventually burst. One night Alice has a strange sci-fi dream and wakes to discover that she has lost three days of her memory. A clue leads her to an unusual resort, Garma, in a country that's unspecified, but may well be that faraway country, the past. Outside of the diegesis it's actually the ancient town of Phaselis in Turkey.
The location is fascinating, there is a graveyard with unusual tombstones, an ancient church with the most magnificent glittering of golden tessera on the ceiling around a large organ. The organist, unusually, faces the audience and is glorified by their location. It's an opulent place that you can imagine was fleetingly glorious in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as a resort, and Arcadian in the distant past. The state of the location mirrors Alice's state, a faded woman, who has only obscure memories of happiness.
The music for the movie is provided by Nicola Piovani (who worked with the Taviani Brothers), and is of the 24 carat variety. The organ and strings piece at the start is punctuated by the beating of what sounds like a heart under a stethoscope. The accompanying shots on the moon, which inevitably remind one of 2001: A Space Odyssey, are appropriately brilliant.
The beautiful stained glass peacocks of Alice's confused memory, were of interest to me. In the Western world we see these lovely creatures as ornamental and leave them wandering around the lawns of great estates. They actually come from the jungles of India however, and there's something quite outrageously beautiful present if you see them glide down the jungle valleys. Rather a metaphor for what modernity has done to the human organism.
Excellent movie, if somewhat of a diminuendo after the awe-striking first sequence. A classic of cinematic paranoia.
It's about a woman of a certain age, Alice, who is an interpreter for a large multinational governmental body. Her whole life we feel is a masterpiece of repression, a Freudian version of Rococo filigree. A friend tells her that there is something truly inhuman about how she dedicates herself incessantly in the pursuit of perfection at a job she hates. This of course is a sign of someone for who inner dams will eventually burst. One night Alice has a strange sci-fi dream and wakes to discover that she has lost three days of her memory. A clue leads her to an unusual resort, Garma, in a country that's unspecified, but may well be that faraway country, the past. Outside of the diegesis it's actually the ancient town of Phaselis in Turkey.
The location is fascinating, there is a graveyard with unusual tombstones, an ancient church with the most magnificent glittering of golden tessera on the ceiling around a large organ. The organist, unusually, faces the audience and is glorified by their location. It's an opulent place that you can imagine was fleetingly glorious in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire as a resort, and Arcadian in the distant past. The state of the location mirrors Alice's state, a faded woman, who has only obscure memories of happiness.
The music for the movie is provided by Nicola Piovani (who worked with the Taviani Brothers), and is of the 24 carat variety. The organ and strings piece at the start is punctuated by the beating of what sounds like a heart under a stethoscope. The accompanying shots on the moon, which inevitably remind one of 2001: A Space Odyssey, are appropriately brilliant.
The beautiful stained glass peacocks of Alice's confused memory, were of interest to me. In the Western world we see these lovely creatures as ornamental and leave them wandering around the lawns of great estates. They actually come from the jungles of India however, and there's something quite outrageously beautiful present if you see them glide down the jungle valleys. Rather a metaphor for what modernity has done to the human organism.
Excellent movie, if somewhat of a diminuendo after the awe-striking first sequence. A classic of cinematic paranoia.