Isabella

Den Frauenfiguren in William Shakespeares Dramen hat der argentinische Regisseur Matías Piñeiro bereits vier Filme gewidmet. ISABELLA ist jüngste Arbeit seiner Reihe „The Shakespeareads“, erneut mit Akteur*innen aus seinem Stammensemble besetzt. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Schauspielerin Mariel. In immer neuen Vorsprechterminen bewirbt sie sich – bald schwanger, bald nicht –für die Rolle der „Isabella“ in Shakespeares „Maß für Maß“. Wie das Originalstück, das eine komplizierte Doppelgänger*innen-Intrige entwickelt, beobachtet auch der Film das Aufbegehren einer jungen Frau und die unmerklichen Übergänge zwischen den Ebenen dieses todernsten Spiels. (Robert Weixlbaumer)

Mariel has a hard time making ends meet and might be forced to ask her brother for economic support – again. Mariel also likes acting and is pregnant. Luciana is an actress and also the lover of Mariel’s brother. These situations and characters are what define ISABELLA, whose dramatic setting is an audition for a production of William Shakespeare’s “Measure by Measure”. Piñeiro takes fragments of the text and appropriates its author’s inquiring spirit to explore the small movements in his own characters’ consciousnesses and to analyze imperceptible emotions such as envy, humiliation, and trust. Everything happens within the flow of a playful dialectic: the temporal setting changes as much as the actual places (Cordoba and Buenos Aires), which stand in for one another in such a way as to break the laws of the continuity of reality, but not those of the consciousness and its operations. Piñeiro’s sure hand in giving coherence to the narrative’s leaps in time is echoed in the work of the two main actresses, whose expressive resources transform nuances of performance into a grammar of gestures, just as the light and colors generate textural hues that permeate the mood of the film. (Roger Koza)

Matias Piñeiro: A PROPÓSITO DE BUENOS AIRES (2006), THE STOLEN MAN (2007), THEY ALL LIE (2009), VIOLA (2012), THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE (2014), HERMIA & HELENA (2016)