Teresa's Body

Teresa's body consists of parts: knees, feet, back. Each of them transmits pain-both physical and emotional – because its whole story is encoded in the body. The invisible wounds inflicted by violence and a world unfriendly to women cannot heal, and they bake and even burn. "My Cross is about to burst," says Teresa, and in search of relief she lies down on the ground, in the house or on the plot of her dead husband. Preferably under a cherry tree, where in the past her daughters had buried a pain-relieving amulet. Near him, memories return, but also hope germinates, because the daughters, already adults, are looking for another way out: from the deadlock of the past, the schemes of femininity and chronic pain. The Film, shot by one of them, is both a ritual of transformation and a place of imagining what is still possible in the face of these losses. Although it contains autobiographical elements and stars the director's mother and sister, it is not a documentary. The women play themselves or people similar to each other, but the very structure of the film is much more complex. It smoothly transitions from Real to fictional events, from intimate conversations to trance dance scenes. It breaks away from reality and suddenly enters the sleep register. A fascinating, brilliantly directed vivisection of the family organism, shown with a discreet sense of humor that lends lightness to bodies freed from the weight of repressed emotions and unspoken words.