Juli & Me

I spent last week in covid-isolation at home in Stockholm, lying down on my sofa, blowing my nose and watching Márta Mészáros trilogy: Diary for My Children, Diary for My Loves and Diary for My Mother and Father. It follows Juli (the director’s younger alter ego) from her teenage years to early adulthood in Hungary during the 1950s. Her parents are dead and she’s forced to stay with her foster mother Magda, a functionary in the Stalinist regime.

Márta Mészáros portrays Juli with such care and respect. She lets her have all kinds of desires: emotional, artistic, intellectual and sexual, and she acts with her own purposes, not to please the audience. Juli wants to be a filmmaker. When her surroundings don't take her ambition seriously, the film still does.

In one scene, Juli returns to the apartment block where she used to live with her parents. She photographs a young girl playing in the yard. She sees her younger self in someone else, mirroring how Márta Mészáros watches herself in Juli. And I somehow get the feeling that I also see myself, when watching them. Not because I share their story (I don’t) but because the film establishes this certain gaze.

I’m interested in how identification is articulated in film criticism. That moment, when I feel the film is watching me back, is so strong. How can I be honest about it in my criticism, when and why is it relevant? These are questions I’d like to discuss at Berlinale Talents.

I started writing in smaller Swedish publications nine years ago. Back then, every text was a reason to research a genre; that’s how I got my film education. I lied to the editors, or I felt like I was lying, because I wasn’t open about how little experience I had.

At least I was truthful about my desire. So is Juli: she wants to be a director. When the jury at the film school in Budapest makes fun of her for wanting to get in, she goes to the film school in Moscow, lying that she was accepted in Budapest and just wants to switch schools. Then she’s in.

Today I get published for larger audiences (I write literary criticism in a Swedish daily newspaper). My texts are products in a media market. What does the economic and journalistic context have to do with my writing? I’m so happy for the week at Berlinale, a new context to write in. Recently I started studying film editing, and one of my hopes for the week is to discuss video essays and other ways to respond to film, rather than with a text. I hope we can articulate not only what film criticism is, but also what we think it could be, should be.

I’m inspired by Juli, by Márta Mészáros. They both seem to know what's important to them. From my sofa, I watch Juli stand up against her foster mother. She desires a man twice her age, because he resembles her father. She sleeps with his son. But she’s not sexualized, her desire is hers. In 1956 the Hungarian Uprising took place. Throughout the films Márta Mészáros safeguards not only Juli’s integrity, but the integrity of people confronting a totalitarian power.

Today we’re watched by cameras all the time. The camera examines, investigates, it lies and reveals. I’m interested in what the camera protects, what it lets remain secret. A gaze can be caring. I wonder what it means to “care” also in writing about film. I hope we’ll explore it together during the festival week.