Human Flowers of Flesh

Ida lives on a sailing yacht on the Mediterranean coast near Marseille with a multinational, all-male, five-person crew. They rarely speak to each other, spending their time in amicable silence. Like their boat, they too drift slowly through life, on the water and on shore. When Ida happens upon the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion in the suburb of Aubagne, she begins to wonder about the organisation and the legends surrounding it. She decides to cross the Mediterranean to visit Sidi bel Abbès in Algeria, where the French legionnaires were headquartered until 1962. The central element of Helena Wittmann’s films is water as a driving force, symbolically and aesthetically. By drastically slowing down the narrative and focussing on fleeting moments in the lives of the crew as they travel across the sea, the 16mm images acquire an immersive, almost palpable sensuality.