Song

“Before written language there were songs.” Laulu opens with this sentence, to the sound of the instrument and voice of 89-year-old Jussi Huovinen, who is the sole inhabitant of his isolated village in Finland since the recent death of his wife, and the last living traditional rune singer. As delicate as a mountain stream — evoked by the laughter of the Icelandic friend of the protagonist– Song spends three years with Hanneriina Moisseinen, a 35-year-old artist who wishes to learn the art of this music with him and to embrace its magic. If song is, as they say, a way of being present in the moment, such is probably also the ambition of the camera in this extremely rich film: being there and recording, without disturbing, the fragile beauty of what it witnesses. The music, which gives rise to sensitive editing and seems softened by the snow-covered and profound landscapes, lights the way for the artist. As the film progresses, fragments of her life and her being are revealed, as are the sorrows of the past that she is attempting to exorcise through her work.

Emilie Bujès