Body of Glass ★★½

Grief as an individual experience has become a widely accepted reality, polar to Naëmi Ada‘s dramatic scenario that looks at its opposite qualities. The German director instead approaches grief as a universal human experience with the ability to form an instant intimate connection between strangers. Having known and lost the same person creates an immediate bond between the ambivalent protagonist of her feature film debut and the bereaved of a young man she never met. This compelling, if highly improbable premise becomes the foundation and framework of a gentle character study exploring different kinds of loss, emotional separation, and instability.

All of these are brutally immediate as Tian (Soma Pysall), a young dancer at the beginning of her career, is left stranded by her choreographer Félix (Manuel Severin). He is also her lover in a twisted, toxic relationship, the controlling nature of which is underlined through their artistic relation. Félix quite literally dictates her every move and commands how she should act and feel. After a violent incident, Tian leaves their hometown Marseille, seeking refuge in the grieving circle around young Zara (Élise Tilloloy), who just lost her brother. A shared hug happens almost intuitively, and Tian’s ability to listen in a situation where many feel the need to talk helps her scheme.

How much of it was laid out remains unclear. Ada’s focus is on her young protagonist’s actions as a product of her own feelings of abandonment and brutal separation. Numbed by their own pain, Zara and her family and friends have their guard down, and maybe themselves long for company in their mourning. Since mourning is what Tian feels, she can just give in to emotions she would otherwise have to hide. Her intentions are egoistic but never malevolent, which makes it easier to connect to her situation. Suspicions arise only on the side of the dead man’s best friend, who starts to question why no one has seen or heard of her before.

As her lies unravel, the past catches up with her in its most threatening form. It sounds like a psycho-thriller and the tropes are all there, but through an empathic approach and sober style, Ada reassembles them into a melange of sociological study and character portrait. Tian’s real-life role as a mourner reflects her dancing, for which she immerses herself in fictional identities. Though outer conditions still determine the events, her new part functions as a form of regaining control over her life. The title points to the fragility of both these emancipation attempts and her deception, evoking the rare psychological condition of glass delusion. People affected by it believe their bodies are made of glass and just as easy to shatter. 

Posture, proximity, and physique become markers of identity in this ambitious pathological exploration of different forms of abuse and manipulation within relationships. Soma Physall’s delicate performance carries the script through its overly constructed stretches. Selma Gravesen‘s unadorned cinematography lends some much-needed realism to the story that remains captivating regardless of its flaws—not despite, but because of its psychological contradictions. Like its protagonist, it’s an imperfect but determined look at the struggle for authenticity after a history of being defined by others.