IVY Moodboard

a ﬁlm by Catarina Mourão

IVY

VISUAL REFERENCES/MOOD BOARD

CHARACTERS AND LOCATIONS

This description of the three main characters in the film finds correspondence in the script of the film, but there are undoubtedly aspects that characterise them that are not so explicit in the script. There is still no pre-defined casting for the film, but the autobiographical dimension of the creative process helps me to better visualise these characters. On the other hand, I am counting on the actors that I will choose for the film, to bring what they really are to the enrichment of the film's characters. As I said before, my work is based on a documentary methodology and I want to take advantage of this when working with the actors. In any case I want to imagine them as they are in the film but also as they were before the film. As spectators we enter this story in media-res and this description can help us to better understand who these characters were before we met them. The images I use are merely indicative of the characters and the environment they are in.

2022

LEONOR

“In Vienna there are shadows. The city is black and everything is done by rote. I want to be alone.

I want to go to the Bohemian Forest...

I must see new things and investigate them.

I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds” Egon Schiele

LEONOR is 45 years old and is the central character in the film. She is the one who establishes the relationship between all the characters and she is the one who is undergoing a major transformation. Although the film does not always develop from her point of view, she is the one who triggers the film's actions.

LEONOR teaches philosophy to children in a primary school, it is a pilot experience and her timetable and salary are reduced. At the same time she is ﬁnishing her doctoral thesis, which is dragging on and on with her insomnia. He has a jovial and informal air, although there are days when we realise that he has had little sleep or has been crying. Life has changed radically and sometimes she feels the ground slipping away from her feet. She is still digesting the decision she has made as if reality has suddenly overtaken her. Sometimes it all seems like a dream or a nightmare, other times it seems to her that what she did had to be done and she has a lively and exciting feeling of starting over.

LEONOR is impulsive and thinks she is always right, but sometimes she is surprised by moments of great fragility. She reminds me a bit of the character played by Katherine Hepburn in George Cukor's films: a woman who appears strong and determined, but who is then overtaken by events. There is something very transparent in her way of being, as if we could see her thinking, trying to find creative solutions to logistical setbacks. Her expression suddenly changes and goes from an attentive and lucid gaze to an almost hypnotised dreamlike state, when she starts doing things that she herself does not understand. But maybe she does understand. In Leonor's personality we feel that conscious and unconscious are sometimes very close and very visible, and that is why Leonor sometimes becomes unfiltered and shares her thoughts and states of mind too much. She does this with her children, but also with people she has just met. These are probably new characteristics of her personality that emerge in this process of finding herself.

To LEONOR'S children, their mother who has always been strong, suddenly seems fragile and vulnerable. They do not like this and worry. But the separation from their parents has forced them to grow up faster.

2022

2022

Conto de Outono (1998), Éric Rohmer

CHICO

CHICO is 11 years old, an attentive and a bit anxious kid. He likes to ask questions that he already knows the answer to as a way of conﬁrmation and security. He still hasn't quite understood what this separation from his parents means and he hopes that Marta will help him at this stage. He feels that everyone around him wants him to grow up faster, but when he tries to show that he's grown up they chase him away. He has started to wander the city on his own. It’s always an adventure because he's at a stage where he loses everything: transport tickets, house key, school card, mobile phone, notebooks. CHICO is a bit of a catastrophist, he thinks the world is going to end, that a tsunami in the Tagus will swallow them up and he has psychosomatic stomach pains. Chico makes himself look more childish than he is to get the attention from his mother and sister from whom he expects a reasonable explanation for this strange decision of his mother. He realises that at this stage of his life he is no longer the centre of the family’s attention. His mother is too absorbed with her new life and Marta also wants her independence. The calls for attention come in the form of temper tantrums or a dangerous game of jumping from higher and higher stairs in the building’s entrance. They are experiments to test his limits and get her attention.

MARTA gets on his nerves and they argue as if they were small children, but there is a strong complicity and solidarity between them.

2022

2022

MARTA

MARTA is 17 years old and in the last year of high-school but has no idea what to do next. She likes poetry and music, "philosophising" under the sun in the garden. She would like to have a year off without having to worry about anything.

Marta, like her mother, is also in an experimental phase but unlike Leonor, everything happens more naturally. Marta would like to take advantage of this moment of transition to gain more independence, but at the same time she worries about her mother and her brother. She wants to free herself but feels a certain responsibility, as if she sometimes feels more mature than her mother.

MARTA is reserved and melancholic, but very assertive and deﬁant when necessary. She has a biting and sharp sense of humour. She has a very conﬁding relationship with her mother, but sometimes pushes her away and thinks her mother shares too much with her.

At the beginning of the ﬁlm Marta is very intolerant with her mother and confronts her whenever she can. If on the one hand she is rebellious and critical of "bourgeois" conventions as she calls them, on the other hand she is a bit reactionary towards her mother's decision to separate. She is contradictory, and her mother points this out to her, but she also criticises her mother for her ambivalence.

In the end, mother and daughter are similar. Throughout the ﬁlm MARTA makes discoveries, realizes that ROSA is in love with her and falls in love with her too. These events inevitably change the way she looks at her mother and take the mother-daughter relationship to another stage.

2022