At Her Cottage

“At Her Cottage” depicts a woman who recounts, first non-synchronously, in voice-over, then synchronously, on camera, an episode of an acquaintance asking a young medical student friend to perform an abortion and his refusal. He claims that she is too young to make such a decision. In another episode, she tells of a man from a nearby town dying after his car plunged into icy waters, while another passenger escapes. “At first, the images in this section are typical cottage scenes. We are presented with vistas overlooking a lake, a young girl lying on a towel, a plastic wheelbarrow and shovel, etc. Somewhat later, we see images of a daughter and, later still, of the girl with her mother, for the most part in a row boat, staring toward the camera. In these later scenes, we hear a photographer taking Polaroid snapshots and see the photographs being passed forward… “The still photographs shown in ‘At Her Cottage’ suggest moments that are plucked from the flux of time and frozen for all time. Like the trophies in the taxidermist’s shop that preserve the forms of the animals that are killed for the purpose of being stuffed, the photograph renders moments lifeless, by isolating them from the animating flux of time.” – Bruce Elder, “Living Fictions,” CMagazine