The Girl and The Spider by Ramon Zürcher

Co-directed with twin brother Silvan (a full-blown creative partner here), is all about the
emotions that surface when Lisa (Liliane Amuat) leaves her roommates to rent her own
apartment, emotions that are frequently hinted rather than verbally spoken. Mara (Henriette
Confurius) is unsure about what to do with herself amid all the chaos of the moving and is
pouting on the sidelines while playing with her own wound. She and Lisa were probably more
than just friends, though it’s left loose ended. We can see that from herpes blister on her upper
lip, which transfers from Mara to Lisa midway through the film, its significance uncertain but
striking all the same.
Mara, one of the main characters, spends much of the film peering out on the changes around
her, finding idle — and occasionally destructive — distractions. While Lisa’s mother, Astrid
(Ursina Lardi), and the contractors try to make fixes to the new apartment, Mara often appears to
be in the way. She’s clearly not helping and, in some cases, actually makes the situation worse.
We get a POV shot of Mara examining the room and how she sees it. I thought it was
foreshadowing that he would be a strange character in the future, especially when he showed us
his strange behavior in the bathroom and even though these behaviors have no purpose and no
contribution to the fiction. We see the use of a camera angle where fixed and medium shots are
dominant. Astrid draws a controlling and detailed mother figure. We understand this from the
very first scenes, when Mara says that her herpes will infect Lisa. However, Mara had only
kissed Lisa on the cheek. It is clear from the sharp gaze that Lisa does not love her mother. From
the conversation between them, I deduced that they were in a tense and turbulent relationship. In
the following minutes, these already tense and nervous dialogues and relations reach their peak
with the words of Lisa's mother, "I have never seen you like my mother". And the fact that she
said this during a casual conversation, and that her mother instantly accepted it, proves that their
relationship has been this way from the beginning.
Mara has an unsettling tone that makes us tense and uneasy throughout the movie. Her gaze is
dull and observant. She does not answer questions asked. Her interest in sharp tools, such as
screwdrivers, and her focus on such tools, spilling coffee on the dog Kira, are also proof of her
tendency to violence. She doesn't shake the hand of her neighbors who come to greet them, and
even though we don't see her face, her disturbing aura is conveyed to us by the neighbor's
confused look and her hand in the air. The sketch plan shown at the beginning of the movie gets
into each other and gets better at the end, but Mara tries to capture that chaotic image again and
is sad because she couldn't succeed, showing that her inner self is chaotic and disorganized just
like the sketch. In the memory that Mara tells Lisa, the fact that she is suddenly surrounded by
children and then suddenly disappears makes us see the complexity of this inner self, as if they
never existed. Jan, who is there for Tamir, seems to like Mara. We capture this not through
conversations, but through looks, as in most scenes. In the apartment, which is the first location
of the movie, most of the bilateral relations seem to be implicitly given to us. Many of the
interactions have a curious hormonal undercurrent to them, and no one seems too concerned
about class or gender barriers.
One of her neighbors, Mrs. Arnold, portrays a typical elderly person who is lonely. Her house
has a dark setting. A pale orange lighting was used inside. She tries to make up for her loneliness
by feeding her neighbor's cat and keeping it attached to her and making her come to her house
every day. She shows that her going up to the rooftop on a rainy night and dancing in that storm
isn't heartwarming at all. I attribute the reason for these strange acts that loneliness is starting to
drive her crazy. When we see the spider, contrary to what I predicted, Mara and Lisa put it on the
wall of the house instead of killing it. The creature is a silent side character. A disarmingly large
arachnid that would probably freak out most humans but is treated here as harmless.
Using close-up shots, shooting key items from events that take place in a certain minute range,
such as spiders, cigarettes, utility knives, used band-aids, sponges, broken glass vases, a sweater
with wine spilled on, a dead fly, a flowerpot, added a different atmosphere to the film and was a
detail that I really liked. Although there are some minor events, they are not especially shown to
the audience and while the characters react, we must imagine that moment. This was one of the
film techniques that I found odd but intrigued. We, though rarely, hear piano notes in the
background during conversations. When the speech is tense, the melody of these piano sounds is
distorted and creates an uncomfortable atmosphere for the audience. I think that the expressions
of the characters have a positive effect on us.
Despite the movie's stability, it strains us with passive-aggressive events and the director mostly
uses breaking of furniture while doing this.
In the final moments of the movie, Mara tells Lisa about the spider in her room when she was
little. Her mother did nothing and after a while the spider disappeared. At this time, the vibrant
palette used begins to fade and eventually turns into a gray gloomy atmosphere. This was
intended to be brought into our eyes because only in a few seconds this progression in
videography takes place. In the continuation of the story, after a while, the web remaining from
the spider disappeared. Her telling the story is cut off here and Lisa is forced to leave. I think the
reason for this sudden color change is Mara's attachment to Lisa and equating her with the
spider. Because the person who leaves the house and disappears is Lisa and she thinks that Mara
will leave her permanently, just like the spider, and she is afraid that one day, just like the
spider's web, her memories will disappear.
A one-time long shot is used only at the end of the movie. During the film, only medium shot
and close up shot techniques were used. And the film closes with the fading shot technique.
The audience may find it appealing or frustrating as so much of "The Girl and the Spider" is left
up for interpretation. So little seems private between these people, which makes the act of spying
on them doubly fascinating, for we’re privy to details no one else notices, ‘’like a spider’’
camped out in the corner of the room.