Al di là  dell’uno

“Everyone has a form of love”, as we hear in Beyond the One, but what a journey it is before people and societies manage to find it! Anna Marziano starts out by collecting stories of abusive jealousy, then explores in this essay film the different forms of possible affinities, including love that outlives death. Like the collages of Dijana Zoradena Elfadino that lend it rhythm and where a cut-out photo slides over another to create a sudden droll or poetic effect, the film weaves together the testimonies from encounters with people of different ages, nationalities and degrees of closeness to the filmmaker. She places, as a centre-canvas, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who warns against romantic love, whose idealism is quick to veer towards ideology. Long-distance relations, couples, common-law couples, single parenting, queer relationships, affectionate flat-shares: the open-ended form of Beyond the One corresponds to the simple individuality of these affinities. As a woman describing the characters in Matisse’s The Dance sums up: “They’re holding hands, but they leave an open space for eventual newcomers”. The film could say as much of its fragments and their spacious interweaving. (Charlotte Garson)