Egō is a little the surprise that everyone was waiting for Gérardmer. With its enticing synopsis, Hanna Bergholm's first feature film is hardly indifferent. Tinja is 12. Her mother pushes her to do gymnastics until she pursues unhealthy perfectionism. One night, the girl will make the discovery of a strange egg, which she will hide, and then hatch until the hatching of a disturbing Alli creature. We were able to talk to Hannah Bergholm just before her film was crowned with the jury's grand prize and that of the young jury in Gérardmer. Back on this UFO which renews the genre film by its metaphorical approach to family neurosis.
Interview with Hannah Bergholm at the Gérardmer Festival
«I hope your life is as beautiful as ours »
EGo in the vein of these fantastic films where horror arises in full light. Far from the fog that reigns in She WillHanna Bergholm prefers to present a world too idyllic to be true. A mother with perfect brushing and sparkling teeth could be right out of an American home that would compete for the ideal family. The choice of colours strikes at first glance with a massive recourse to tones that are readily opposed: blue against pink.
A pink cardigan sweater that hangs on the shoulders of an erased father or Tinja always over the blue gymnastics slices like the naughty little duck in the middle of a room with barby-girl shots with these wallpapers with pink motifs. « We toured in Latvia and not in Finland. From a Finnish point of view, Finland is thought to be recognized but something is not normal. We wanted to create a world that could exist a little anywhere in the West. » Tells us the director.
« I wanted to create a unique world in the film, a world that could be found anywhere in the world. In this film, the suspense takes place not in the darkness, but in pieces with pastel colours. »
As soon as we discover the creature, the film quickly reverses what we could have expected. The monster is monstrous only from the moment he looks like us. Alli is a part of Tinja as of the refoulement of his own mother. If the perspective is always that of Tinja, Egō helps to generate discomfort by maintaining the confusion between the reality of the monster and its obvious figuration. The monster had to exist physically as if neurosis were to find body where to express itself. Through Alli, Tinja can externalize her fears as much as giving love to her double. Like a lack to fill, Alli finds refuge in her closet or under her bed. It's not the monster that we believe. Tinja vomits her ill-being to feed Alli. The organic character of the ensemble is amplified by the use of animatronics rather than synthetic images.
« What we determined from the beginning, the writer and I, was that the mother had to be the bad guy in the movie. »
Egō managed to draw his own path in the fantastic genre films by a fantastic play by Siiri Solalinna (Tinja) who endorsed a schizophrenic character throughout the filming. A beautiful feat for a very first sensitive and delicate role to embody. When her mother odieuously entrusted her infidelities to her with a smile on her lips, the child's gaze, who would like to fill her mother with sadness, did not even allow the mother to feel for a moment this disappointment, too obsessed with her own person, herself imprisoned with an empty life.
« Tinja is afraid that her mother thinks she is like Alli the monster: a deformed, repulsive, unpredictable and sticky creature that no one can love. Alli le Monstre is also something the mother fears to see in her »
Basically, « Mother speaks more to her screen than to her own daughter » reveals Hanna Bergholm. A mirror of a society that looks empty before living, Egō is a powerful and fantastic plea for revelation of the subject. Release scheduled on 27 April in blu-ray, DVD and VOD.
Hanna Bergholm - Director and screenwriter
Hanna Bergholm is a Finnish director and screenwriter. She graduated in 2009 from the University of Art and Design of Helsinki with a master's degree in filmmaking. She has produced internationally award-winning short films and television series. His latest horror short film, Puppet Master, has been selected at several international festivals, including the Fantasia Film Festival of Montreal 2018, the Fantastic Fest of Austin 2018 and the MoMA Museum of Modern Art New York 2019. Egō is his first feature film awarded this year to Gérardmer. A director to follow!
Video review - Egō
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