dir. Anatoly Vassiliev 

Film Screening of Performance, Russia

Valérie Dréville summons the figure of the betrayed wife and infanticidal mother to the stage. What we absorb of Médée-Matériau, is the brilliant rhythm of poetic and furious words. The actress, seated immobile on a chair, smokes a cigarette and lets it burn. Médée soon joins her. On a video screen, images of the sea unfurl, rocking from ebb to flow, the implacable ritual carried out by the barbarian woman. Médée gives Jason’ s girlfriend a dress, which catches fire. She sets alight two puppets, which resemble her children. By the end of the performance, the actress is laid bare and the tragic heroine has turned the past into a pile of ashes. Thus she effaces the memory of Jason, the beloved. In its intense acuteness, its incredible precision, its consistent accuracy, the play requires all the strength and softness of Valérie Dréville to render audible the unutterable, Médée’ s path, with cutting phrases and murders, her determined path between love, jealousy, and the longing to be reborn in a different reality. 

Duration: 60 minutes