Mateus and Irene plan to celebrate their wedding anniversary at a tropical retreat, but are separated on the eve of their departure, and forced to question their relationship and how they relate to their troubled son, in this enigmatic and strikingly beautiful third feature from Sandro Aguilar.

Amidst the mechanical sound that harks back to film projection, some musical notes, and whispers that accentuate the enigmatic nature of the images in permanent succession, we plunge into a world populated by nebulous and hardly decipherable shapes, resembling fragments of landscapes, faces, or animal shapes that we keep trying to discern like fleeting clouds. Symmetrically mirrored, bringing to mind some video works exhibited by Belgian artist Nicolas Provost at Solar in 2008, Sandro Aguilar’s strange figures evoke phantasmagorias of yore, or the renewed amazement provided by the Cinema experience. The opacity extends to the title itself, “The Detection of Faint Companions”, suggesting a thorough research on bodies and beings, microscopically observed. In these images, Sandro Aguilar seems to examine fragments of the world in which he moves, without pausing on each of them for more than a split second.

Un hombre en un hospital de Lisboa para despedirse de su padre moribundo. Una mujer embarazada y sin nombre, superviviente del accidente que mató a su amante. Hay una “zona” en ese hospital en que la muerte y la vida se hallan en suspensión, un punto casi mágico, casi trabajado entre David Lynch, Ulrich Seidl. O un trozo de anarquía que no responde a leyes terrenales.

A few words on-screen introduce an enigmatic character: Hector is recently separated, grieving, angry – and wearing medieval armour. We then see a succession of impressionistic shots, labelled only with their location, map coordinates and, sometimes, an activity. Filmed near Rimouski, this short film by Sandro Aguilar invites us to enter the mind of a man who has cut off ties with the world. An anxious soundtrack overflowing with intricate details forces us to reconsider each shot, each moment. Are we taking Hector’s perspective? Are we watching an endless hallucination? Working with minimal resources, the filmmaker creates a world, a fascinating elliptical narrative that captures a certain sensory and emotional discombobulation that Hector is far from alone in feeling. (Bruno Dequen)