Super Natural

It starts with two voices in the dark, although they’re hardly voices, more electronic squelching noises darting back and forth across the soundtrack, their messages subtitled, gently directing us through the film. They speak to each another with such tenderness that they could be in love, although the overlapping “yous”, “Is” and “wes” they keep repeating could also be aimed at those all around them, whether those who later take to the screen or those sitting in the auditorium watching it; guided meditation, like cinema, is a collective experience, something for everybody. Bodies of all kinds duly appear before the camera, filmed with the same tenderness and in so many shifting, shimmering textures: young performers with and without disabilities, filigree crabs and shrimps, drawings of birds, a singing mermaid princess and scuttling plastic insects. These myriad bodies are impossible to separate from the landscape they find themselves in, the waters, rocks and mountains of Madeira, its plants, flowers and fruits, an island as a body full of bodies that are full of bodies in turn; such effortless elimination of boundaries is indeed supernatural. Hug me baby, don’t let me fall. (James Lattimer)