Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Parasol Unit, London N1
A levitating priest bobs serenely through the air, hovering above characters caught in a drama of death, redemption and guilt. Death, ruggedly handsome, sits Bergman-style opposite a poet at her kitchen table in a Helsinki suburb and politely demands the delivery of "some words"; later, the poet's words literally float off the typewritten page, leaving it blank once again. Two Algerian boys murder their French playmate; one counters the question of motive with the story of the village massacre of 40 countrymen by French soldiers. "Have you ever seen a Frenchman in prison?" the boy asks a member of his psychiatric team. The answer is a quiet shake of the head.
Time shifts and space collapses in the richly (and sometimes exasperatingly) complex multi-screen films of the acclaimed Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Where Is Where, the first of three on display at the Parasol Unit gallery, is almost an hour long, and opens with the poet intoning a few lines from a poem by Rimbaud. We follow her, the events and the static images from screen to screen on each of the four walls.
The murder the film depicts was committed over 50 years ago, and was documented by the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth. With a controversial foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre, it explored, for the first time, the psychological impact of colonialism. But as our poet tries to make sense of these events, she finds that she is stained by guilt.
The film is both cinematically compelling and a little too self-consciously arty for its own good. It also suffers from the odd mildly risible moment: solemn recitations, after all, sit uneasily with visitations by a Monsieur Mort and levitating clergy.
In 2002, Ahtila staged a major exhibition at Tate Modern, after which surprisingly little was heard of her. So this new show must be highly anticipated by those who, like me, were thrilled to discover her work. That earlier survey was called "Real Characters, Invented Worlds", and the title provided a neat summary of her strange, complicated and beguiling films. In one of these, a couple attending marriage guidance finally reaches a point beyond words, finding that they can communicate only by barking. But what plays out is less a rediscovery of puppy love, more a frightening encounter between rival pack animals.
Of the remaining two films in the current exhibition, one is a short, Sisyphean drama about West African fishermen defeated by violent waves but having to return to their futile task again and again. The other, the most haunting of the three, is the tale of a dead dog and the childless woman who mourns it. She finds comfort in the early morning chorus of the barking dogs that gather each day to accompany the church bells outside her studio in Benin.
This sad doggy tale, simple, elegiac and joyously uplifting, perhaps, brings us closest to Ahtila's heart.
Show runs until 25 April. More details: parasol-unit.org
