Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006, director: Goran Dukic)

This film is based on Etgar Keret's short story "Kneller's Happy Campers", and according to Wikipedia the film was initially supposed to be shot on Kodak's 16mm Ektachrome Film, which turned out to be too time-consuming in the process.

The film shows us a different kind of dimension, where people go when they have "off-ed", commited suicide. Everything looks more dusty, paler and sadder in this place. There is a blue-ish tint to the images.
People keep on "living" in this place, they eat and work, they have relationships, but no one smiles. Except for some people's clothes (the same they wore when they killed themselves) there are no bright colours, or flowers. We hardly see any water, but mostly desert and deserted places. The camera pans calmly over the dry landscape, there are many still shots (I think they always have people in them, though) and a filter was used to suck out strong contrasts. Also I believe that shooting in a desert area like this with strong sunlight will naturally cause washed-out colours.

 

The film is held together by the death and re-awakening of the main character Zia, and inbetween we are lead by a roadtrip in which Zia tries to find his ex-girlfriend because of whom he killed himself in the first place. His friend Eugene doesn't have anything better to do than drive him, and Mikal, a hitch-hiker they pick up on the way is looking for a way out of this place, because she got there by mistake.
Most people seem lost in their state of being, but a few are looking for some kind of happiness in this place, for a friend or a lover, or a "miracle" that will take their minds off of their purposeless lives, of this forlorn place. Each person has some kind of baggage, is sad because of something, is broken in some kind of way.
A metaphor for this state of being are the ever-returning images of half-sunken used furniture in the sand, broken down cars and torn and shattered houses. We frequently see them when Eugene's car passes through the scenery, and the broken objects usually stand between the camera and the road, so the shot consists of a pan across the trash and wasteland, while following the car. I enjoyed these and other poetic details a lot, as well as the characters attempts to bring some humour into this place, ironically without being able to laugh.

- Nicole