Die tobende Ordnung

by Lucile Desamory

 In Post-Production _ Release 2025

In twelve episodes, each six minutes long, De wervelende wirwar/The Swirling Tangle follows Joke during a solar eclipse in Aalst, Belgium, as she is confronted with the elliptical structure of her own memory. Joke, a soap actress (played by the well-known soap actress Joke Devynck) is tracked as she goes about her everyday life, giving classes to other actors, visiting the bakery, hairdresser's, and café. An old, crackling voiceover provides commentary on Joke’s actions and encounters, but it also intervenes like a chorus in a classic Greek tragedy.

These banal activities are increasingly disrupted in drastic ways. Voices disappear and come back singing, a lost nun on Nordic walking sticks rescues a megalomaniacal domino arrangement, and a schizophrenic paramilitary makes unwanted advances. Each episode builds on the twists of plot in the previous episode, creating cliffhangers that keep the audience engaged.

Gradually, Joke realizes that she is browsing through memories from her own past, projected onto the reality of the present. This culminates in an exposé in a thrift store where it is revealed that the voice of the voiceover is her own, 20 years in the future.

The Swirling Tangle uses the tropes of soap serials, driving these to the extreme, with the intention of creating an amalgam of television and art film aesthetics. Essential here are the achievements of popular Flemish actresses, whose cultural capital is strategically employed.

Throughout the series, variations on Ohrwurm, a composition by Nicholas Bussmann, form a consistent thread, escalating the absurdity in each episode.

The Swirling Tangle advocates for the manipulation of our own memories and highlights the pleasure of reconfiguring past events. It invites us to contemplate the possibility that forgetting can bring to life a new way of living, as if we had never lived before.

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Produced by CASKFILMS (Berlin) and Escautville (Antwerp)

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