Traces on the rock of elsewhere.

TRACES ON THE ROCK OF ELSEWHERE Directed by Majdi El-Omari, 1999, Phoenix Films (Montreal), 16mm, 14 minutes

Salma and Pierre live in a Montreal suburb. It is winter. Salma receives a letter from her native Palestine, which she left two decades ago. The arrival of the letter stirs up disturbing memories of her troubled past, and she struggles to cope with a sudden torrent of inner pain. Although the early scenes between Salma (Samia Costandi) and Pierre (Robert Morin) are achingly awkward, the drama of Salma's inner journey gathers a slow and sure momentum, evoked in El-Omari's intelligent sound editing and concentrated in two startling freeze-frame images deployed in the film. His use of Montreal's wintry cityscape is also assured and appropriate, and underscores not only his character's alienation but also El-Omari's connection to a long tradition of suggestive winter imagery in Quebec cinema. Traces on the Rock of Elsewhere's unaffected style is refreshing, and it refuses to seek sanctuary from its unabashed sincerity in hip formalism or in cool appraisals of its protagonist's intimate anguish.