TIFF Review: Tuva Novotny’s Blind Spot

Blind Spot -  (Blindsone)  (Norway, 2018, 102 min). Review written by Shannon Foskett

In Blind Spot (Blindsone), a brave and visionary feature film debut from Swedish talent Tuva Novotny (known for her English-language performances in Eat Pray Love (2010), Borg vs McEnroe (2017), and Annihilation (2018)), pressure for answers to these questions comes by way of an unfathomable tragedy that punctures the contented veneer of the daily life of a family in Oslo.

Mental illness 

Against the backdrop of a family history of mental illness and ongoing tensions with other girls at school, young teen Thea (Nora Mathea Øien)’s actions one evening send her stepmother Maria (Pia Tjelta) and the rest of the family into shock, sparking difficult questions about what it means to truly recognize and relate to someone. In an era of trigger warnings and safe spaces, Blind Spot boldly walks a line between the need to bring visibility to mental illness, on the one hand, and the importance of not romanticizing or glorifying it, on the other.

Single take

Shot in a single, elegant take (there is no editing), events unfold in real-time before an extraordinarily sensitive camera whose movements track the shifts in emotional direction, beginning with the indifferent, static views from a bench at handball practice, in which girls sporadically run in and out of the frame against the directives of the coach offscreen (“Keep working!”). The camera then reframes as we begin to follow two girls as they exit the gym to change, and then as they walk home, discussing their homework in considerable, dutiful detail on the way. As we learn the topics of their essays, the word lengths, which algebraic geometry questions are assigned, and of the Norwegian tests that haven’t been marked yet – a sense of anxiety gradually builds in strange counterpoint to this apparently placid and unremarkable dialogue repeatedly punctuated with brief, insistent words of encouragement between the two friends. Until the girls separate, however, and the camera lingers on Thea as she walks the rest of the way home, the viewer isn’t certain to whom this narrative belongs. Indeed, there will be no privileged points of character access in the film: we are as unable to anticipate the motions and events of the afternoon as the characters themselves. Such ambiguity or obscurity, present from the outset, undoubtedly also contributes to the tension growing in the absence, up to this point, of an initiating narrative event. In this respect, these opening sequences evoke the unadorned temporality of Van Sant’s Gerry (2002) and De Sica’s Umberto D. (1952).

Privacy and distance

But things tip quickly from the quotidian into the dilated time of trauma for the duration of the film.  In one particularly notable shot, a prolonged and unflinching close up holds on Maria as she stares out the window on a ride home in a taxi. The camera sits for what feels like ten minutes, watching and waiting as she cycles through tears and fatigue. We catch ourselves leaning in, attempting to read off her facial expressions and into the mental drama of what we think she – and we – would be going through. If Blind Spot teaches us anything, however, it is precisely that such attempts at recognition based upon surface appearances can be profoundly misleading and incomplete. Amidst this intimacy of the cinematography that seems to miss nothing, which has even been described as “claustrophobic,” Novotny manages a certain degree of privacy and distance between characters, evinced in a scene in which familiar narrative tropes would lead us to expect an outcome that is not at all indulged. The film also finishes on an open-ended note, refusing the closure of narrative certainty and inviting us to remain with the family in the indefinite and sobering (to use Novotny’s word) time of a moment that seems as if it could keep expanding.

Three weeks production

Despite the weight of its topic, or perhaps because of it, the international premiere of Blind Spot in Toronto was a clear success – as evidenced by a sold-out screening and bolstered by Novotny’s participation in a high-profile screenwriter’s panel on the topic of “the hardest scene to write.” An audience already captivated by a clip of the scene in the hospital room was further impressed to learn that Novotny wrote a full draft of the 40-page script in a single setting, and total production time was only about three weeks (1-2 weeks of actor rehearsals; 2 days of tech; 1 general walkthrough, then 3 days of back to back shooting, which created one version of the movie each day). The third day’s take was ultimately chosen, Novotny explained in the film’s Q & A, because its dull grey skies had a less romanticized look compared to the beautiful snow and sunshine on the second day.

Expanding the conversation

Where the film stops short of offering overt answers or directives, lessons emerge between the gaps and missing pieces: more could have been discussed, and sooner; less could have been assumed. This singular, revelatory first feature thus marks an achievement not only for nuances of film language, but for expanding the conversation on mental health. As Steve Gravestock, programmer for Scandinavian films at the Toronto International Film Festival, said, Blind Spot was one of the most powerful films he’d ever seen. Its title hints at one of the reasons why.