Pas de Deux, Froid [Carles Pamies, Spain, 2017]

Two homeless people walk separately towards their respective place of rest for the night on a cold and uninviting Spanish street. Each of them settles down, draped in a rough blanket, tattered attire and covering themselves with large lengths of cardboard. The camera dissolves on their faces in slumber as the shot changes to black and white, with two dancers now taking their place. The dancing figures meet in a suggested meeting of spirits. Lightly clad in black trunks and vests, the dancers move in a shallow pool of water against a stark, white stone backdrop. The sunlit water casts a shimmering light across their bodies as they flutter in unison. Once in full flow, the screen becomes saturated with warm colour.

The concept of Pas de Deux, Froid is very simple even in spite of its abstraction in form. It does feel that somehow the film is going for something more profound and lofty, but the overall result feels slightly flat and uninvolving. This may have something to do with the dancers too, their performance not the most compelling or elegant. Perhaps because the film spends so much time in this dream/dance sequence, it takes the viewer some effort to allow any feelings for the people that the film supposes to really be about, who only appear peripherally in the first few seconds of the film. Since the core of the film’s focus is on homelessness, it would have been nice to spend just a little more time with the characters in their waking lives.