Mark Reviews Movies: SERENDIPITY (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 17, 2019

The first feature from French artist Prune Nourry is the personal documentary Serendipity, which follows her life and, mostly, her work in light of a cancer diagnosis. The art is—thankfully, since the filmmaker's focus is very much centered on it—impressive.

What's missing from most of this, though, is a genuine sense of reflection. When it does come—as Nourry shows hospital and doctor visits, contemplates that she might not be alive to see the completion of a certain piece, and confronts the inevitable changes her body will undergo because of surgery and chemotherapy—the movie is at its strongest.

The majority of the documentary, though, plays like a highlight reel of the artist's more recent and ongoing works. The thrust of Nourry's art, even before the diagnosis, is bodies—specifically women's bodies.

For a series of pieces, she traveled to India, where statues of women's bodies are given the heads of almost anthropomorphic cows, with large and sad eyes—a statement about how, while bovines are treated as sacred in the country, women are not as revered. Another piece has a team of locals gathering mud from a river. The mud is transformed into a grand statue, which is paraded through town and ceremoniously dropped back into the river. Her most ambitious piece is an army of terracotta girls, like the famous warriors in a Chinese emperor's tomb, which are buried and will be excavated in 10 years.

The point, perhaps, is that Nourry has always considered topics like anatomy (There are multiple pieces about human reproduction, which becomes relevant to her current state, since she has to freeze her eggs before undergoing chemo) and the cycle of life. All of that work now possesses a different significance. She has to consider her own body and her own mortality. Nourry even receives a visit from the late Agnès Varda, who helps her create a piece out of the process of cutting her hair before treatment.

The framing of this movie as an exploration of Nourry's work makes a certain kind of sense. She expresses herself through her art, of course, and there's a certain safety in that process, because it's the work, not her, that is on display. Even so, the narrative and structural choices of Serendipity present a certain distancing effect, which keeps a barrier between the person and us.

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