Communicating Vessels

This compelling film transforms some famous “actions” from 1960s and 1970s performance/video art into the stuff of interpersonal psychodrama. A teacher at art school (Fiona Reid) sits at her webcam relating the story of E., a gifted but also troubled student. E.’s videos are inspired by Fluxus-style gestures, but when she turns to her ailing mother as subject matter, a crisis intervenes – and the teacher literally re-enters the picture. Elliptical abstraction rubs shoulders with the thriller genre. (Adrian Martin)