A day in the life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra

From Viennale

Pushing a coming-of-age story into the realm of the mystical and metaphysical, Jacqueline Lentzou’s second feature unfolds as a sensorial and poetic exploration of our presence in the world. Jo is a teenager who rebels against her mother, kisses one of the boys at school and surrenders herself to music above all. Her existence is transformed when she hears Phaedra’s ethereal singing during a music class. The camera lingers close to the characters’ faces and bodies, trembling as it seeks to capture fleeting emotions that words cannot convey. This dreamlike atmosphere is disturbed when the outside world breaks in. The narrative then shifts into a cosmic dimension, where only spirits and mental images remain. Through a sensory exploration of what lingers after someone has disappeared, the film conjures up the ghost of a young teenager killed by the police in Athens in 2008. Lentzou’s impressionistic direction follows the characters’ inner movements, guided by light, textures and shifting atmospheres. A gentle melancholy permeates the film: a search for beauty intertwined with the traces left by things that have been lost—fragments that can suddenly resurface as memories, if only for the duration of a song. (Nepheli Gambade)