« Unsere Vorstellungen von männlich und weiblich sind unzureichend, um Farne zu verstehen, die beides zugleich sind. »
[Our concepts of male and female are insufficiant to understand ferns, which are both at the same time.]

Introverted and unqualified, Eva (Simone Bucio) is unexpectedly tasked with foleying the sound for a commercial featuring a horse. As she slowly acclimates to the new job, her obsession with creating the perfect equine sounds grows into something more tangible. Eva harnesses this new physicality, becoming more confident and empowered, and lures an unassuming botanist into an intriguing game of submission. Shot on lush 16mm, PIAFFE is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice.

Shot on lush 16mm film, Ann Oren’s Piaffe is a visceral journey into control, gender and artifice. A film that’s likely to get a lot of attention – if it’s seen.

The film obligation

We often hear directors justify their choice to use film because of its beauty or purity. Ann Oren had a much better reason for doing so. The grainy 16 mm film enhances the visceral ambience desired in Piaffe, and its more tactile feel. It also works symbiotically with the sound approach, with the main character working as a noisemaker. Interesting fact for film fans: the director has chosen to preserve the occasional light leaks that occur with silver film, creating a sort of reddish flash on a few occasions. 

But there’s another, deeper reason that justifies, even obliges, the use of film. Fans of the history of cinema or photography, like those of biology, are probably familiar with Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments with moving horses. In a way, these experiments led to the dream of capturing moving images. So you could say that horses and photographic film are intimately linked to cinema. 

It’s fascinating to see how the director manages to create a film that is so closely interwoven with the history of her medium. Incidentally, for those wondering, “Piaffe” is the name of a movement, a dressage technique when the horse trots on place. This is what the horse does at length in the film, as it is this movement that Eva attempts to put into sound.

Everything is connected

In Piaffe, the director creates connections both visually and conceptually. For example, the horse being trained curls downwards, reminiscent of ferns (the plants Dr. Novak studies), as they spiral downwards during the growth process. And ferns are also hermaphrodites, creating a parallel with Eva as she grows an extra organ on her lower back. We could add to this conceptual connection the character of Zara, who is on the non-binary spectrum. 

As a result, the director treats the ferns and the horse with the same sensitive eye as the human characters, with sound effects, techno beats and, no less importantly, silences. Sound being a major storytelling tool in this film, it has been carefully sculpted, as it highlights Eva’s inner journey as well as the constant suspense that underpins the mood. Namely: what’s going on with Eva?

By immersing herself in the work of creating sounds for the horse, Eva metamorphoses into an animal. How does her visceral imitation convey her introversion and her new job as a foley artist? Eva doesn’t communicate in a straightforward way, and her setbacks dictate her actions at first. The woman is very introverted. She speaks very little and has difficulty formulating a simple response. Her interactions with other living beings are painful.

But when she imitates the horse for sound effects, she becomes obsessed and it takes over, generating new intuitions within her. Eva’s transformation comes from a certain legend – or is it true? – that when a foley artist starts out in the profession, he or she can experience a psychotic episode. Because after spending all day in a silent studio, where every layer of sound you hear is carefully constructed by you, going out into the noisy street can be quite shocking, when the sounds make no sense at all. Moreover, the director effectively stages this idea when Eva leaves the studio to take her work to the producer. The sound is increased tenfold, becoming harsh and irritating for both the character and the viewer. In fact, this is what led Eva to take Zara’s place. He (or she) had a nervous breakdown as a result of the intense sound effects process. Both find themselves possessed by the horse’s presence, leading to a beautiful, surreal scene in which the two dance together in a queer nightclub. Their dance becomes a kind of horse movement, in which the two seem to be courting each other horse-like, even snorting.

I’ll stop here, but there’s a lot more to be said about the relationship between animals, plants and characters. We could even add the drug from the famous commercial…

A little more…

Piaffe is also a sensual work featuring a BDSM/fetishist relationship of desired submission. The botanist with whom the young woman becomes infatuated lives among plants, observing them closely. The choice of botanist is no accident. A botanist tries to control, hybridize and transform the natural courses of wild plant life, both for science and for human consumption. When Eva approaches him, she creates a game of seduction from a position of apparent submission. It is through this submission that she allows herself to experiment with sensations she would not otherwise allow herself to experience. 

Oren allows herself to show this relationship without false prudery or unnecessary graphic sexuality. And yet, she succeeds in delivering an extremely sensual and exciting film as she develops her character before our very eyes, plunging headfirst into this false submission. 

One of the most striking scenes is when the woman offers roses to Dr. Novak. He then takes her to a room where he ties her up using a specific technique and uses the rose in an almost surreal erotic game in which he inserts the stem of the flower into Eva’s throat. Note that when she approaches orgasm, she stomps her feet a little like a horse does. 

So, if you’re in the mood for a unique cinematic experience, go and see Piaffe. You’ve certainly never seen anything like it.

Trailer