Scarlet Blue

Movie poster for film Scarlet Blue

Scarlet Blue is the latest feature film from director Aurélia Mengin and had its UK premiere at the 25th edition of London’s FrightFest, playing on Discovery Screen 1. The festival description for the film says the following:

Photo of Aurélia Mengin - director of Scarlet Blue, and also stars in the film as the mysterious character Chris

“Mario Bava meets David Lynch in Aurélia Mengin’s shocking visual extravaganza. Forty-year-old Alter suffers from depression, schizophrenia and a schism of communication with her mother. After a suicide attempt, she consults a healer who practices mystical hypnosis and lives an isolated existence in a cave. And it seems Léandro Lecreulx’s unique methods are effective for each session he infiltrates deeper into Alter’s unconscious and connects her to her deepest childhood fears. Then Léandro gives her a Polaroid camera so she can take photos before and after each crisis. Will they help piece together her memory loss puzzle”

“Visual extravaganza” is an incredibly apt descriptor for this captivating and engrossing film. It is not often that I come across a film where I feel like the director had some insight into the inner workings of my mind and made a film specifically for me, but that is exactly how I felt whilst watching Scarlet Blue. This is a film that looks beautiful, every scene and frame has so much intentionality behind it, you get pulled in and lost in the visuals on screen. Building on top of that, this is also a film that is absolutely dripping in Queerness and Eroticism, an incredibly human story playing out beneath the surface of the striking imagery.

The director stated the following about her process to telling Alter’s story: “To bring schizophrenia and personality splitting to life, I approached the character of Alter from two distinct facets: the first facet represents Alter when she is connected to reality, embodying the realistic part of the character, portrayed by Amélie Daure. The second facet represents the schizophrenic double, which encompasses all sequences where Alter experiences hallucinatory crises, primal urges, nightmares, and moments of madness. This borderline facet of Alter is played by Anne-Sophie Charron”.

I feel that this was an incredibly intuitive and refreshing approach to telling this story, casting two actors who have incredibly similar facial structures that you may not know at first glance that it is two different people. I also feel that compared to many other genre films that explore Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder, having a minute difference between the actors as opposed to stark differences, feels like a more empathetic approach to exploring these lived realities.

In a film that revolves around powerful imagery, I felt that the decision to have Alter’s therapist suggest the camera as a conduit for her memories which will be the photographs that are produced. The concept of living in the moment and capturing and cataloguing the lived experience was a powerful one, and I cannot help but wonder if it being an analogue polaroid camera was a commentary on the digital age we currently find ourselves in, where we immediately question and doubt most photos we come across due to the ease with which they can have filters applied and be edited.

I am a Queer person, but it took a long time to be able to actually proudly admit that to myself, so I found so much to relate to in Scarlet Blue, following along with Alter’s story as she pieced together her own identity in trying to understand her past. Navigating Queerness while trying to understand who you are, and piecing together what parts of your past were you, and which were the persona you hid behind is not an easy thing, so I really felt drawn to Alter as a character.

Scarlet Blue is a beautiful and tragic examination of the human condition, and while as a film it never spells things out for you, all the answers are there if you are willing to embrace the experience and go along for the visually enthralling ride.

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