Pendular

Writer-director Julia Murat’s innovative Pendular is a psychological drama about a pair of artists and lovers who pay dearly for crossing over into one another’s creative privacy. The unnamed central characters—a modern dancer (Raquel Karro) eager to explore her choreography with other dancers in a large space, and a sculptor (Rodrigo Bolzan) working with space-consuming, heavy materials—naively decide to divide and share an entire empty floor in a converted warehouse. It seems like a good idea at first, with a little area to the side that they can convert into a bedroom. The fairly graphic sex scenes underscore the passionate, idealistic nature of the pair as they create a life together while at the same time each is driven by the individual imperative to make art. Much of the film simply observes the woman dancing experimentally, while the man silently wrestles with bending metals—but their close proximity to each other exacts a huge toll on their relationship. And the viewer is left wondering if two people can ever achieve clarity about where one stops and the other begins. Recommended. (T. Keogh)