Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch 35 Shots of Rum
2009 · Claire Denis · 35 Shots of Rum on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch for two rice cookers appear on one kitchen table. (setting)
A father brings home a rice cooker for his daughter; she has already bought one, and neither of them says a word about the second one sitting there.
Payoff: An ordinary object quietly announces that this household is becoming two households. In the reading: demark. The reading calls the second rice cooker a demark: an object that stops being furniture and starts asking to be read.
Watch Lionel's face stay still while he says almost nothing. (performance)
Alex Descas gives him a monumental stillness, a father whose love is carried by provision and silence rather than by speech.
Payoff: His face holds one quality steady, the way an object can, instead of reacting scene by scene. In the reading: icon of quality (the reflecting face). The reading calls a face like this a qualisign: a quality expressed and held, not discharged into action.
Watch the camera stay close on hands and napes. (camera)
Godard shoots in tight, often telephoto-flattened close-up, treating skin and texture with the same attention other films save for faces alone.
Payoff: The camera's tenderness toward bodies tells you how these two people love each other before any line does.
Notice scenes start after they've already begun. (cutting)
Lecorne's editing withholds the connective exposition a normal drama supplies, so relationships are inferred from a glance or a gesture instead of stated.
Payoff: You are trusted to fill in what the film leaves out, the way you would with people you actually know.
Listen for the hum of the train under quiet scenes. (sound)
Tindersticks supply spare, melancholy cues while ambient sound, the trains, the rain, the city, stays textured and precise throughout.
Payoff: The everyday noise of Lionel's job becomes the film's quiet, constant heartbeat.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the hands, on the throttle, on the table, on a shoulder. They say everything this film refuses to say out loud.