Reflective Encounters

“In Umbilical, Elpida Stathatou expunges the demons of her strict religious upbringing through two tense dialogues. The first is invisible. While a young woman played by Stathatou tries to make out with a handsome boyfriend, the phone rings incessantly. A shot down the other end of the phone, of wrinkled hands stubbing out a cigarette, tells us that mother is calling. Stathatou rushes over, but it’s just as she feared: Her strict Christian mother (Themis Bazaka channeling Gena Rowlands) believes her daughter is under a spell. On and off the phone with an unseen religious leader, she believes that Stathatou needs to perform a humiliating ritual in order to avoid disaster.

This episode is captured through tactile close ups of hands at work and clothes as they wrap and conceal a person. Stathatou lingers on the juice dripping out of an orange, and on her mother’s pet bird, often eschewing the detail of faces for the body itself. Meanwhile, the sounds of a kettle, of chairs scraping against the floor, of a lighter flicking, are high in the mix to evoke Stathatou’s own sense-memory. As Stathatou’s encounter with her mother continues, Umbilical reveals how abusers can use one trauma to pile on more and more pain. ”

— Ben Flanagan