Synopsis
Muffled opens with a montage of flowers, a garden, flesh, two women in bed together bathed in a golden light.
The action opens with the same two young women in bed, but their room is chaotic, filthy and morbid. One of the women, L, gets out of bed, looks out of the window at the bright day outside, and insists to her girlfriend, S, that they go outside. S rolls over in bed and resists, but L drags her out.
In the bathroom, they prepare to leave the house in an elaborate ritual: S feeds L a pill, then L places a dust mask over S's face, seals it with electrical tape, then a diving mask over her eyes, then cotton wool to seal the mask.
Both wearing their strange headgear, L and S leave the house and enter the world outside. In a park, they look at flowers and marvel at the world outside. S tries to kiss L, but L resists. S insists on removing their masks and they kiss deeply. But L and S start sneezing, scratching, swearing: the pollen they'd built such big barriers from for so long finally invades them.
The film ends with a montage of allergies - eczema on limbs, pollen flying through the air, echoing the montages that run through Alan Resnais' French New Wave film, Hiroshima Mon Amor.
Director's Notes
When writer/producer Yvette Blackwood handed me the script I was immediately struck by the possibility of images inherent in the situation and condition of L & S. Though presented as a classic gag film there was another layer that I was interested to draw out and that had to do with the characters relationship to the world. Like all of humanity the characters are losing touch with each other and with the physical earth... the roads, the walls, the material we cpver ourselves in is turning in on us... it is not computers that are having their revenge it is the very material they are made from. L & S cannot be touched by the environment, it makes them sick, and it defines their relationship, their co-dependence. Images of sensual flesh and the world taunt the chatacters in Muffled as I felt that sensuality and physicality had a desperate significance and this is where I was remided of Hiroshima Mon Amor. The diffrence is that the apocalyptic nightmare has become domesticated - it is in the micro- it is a daily presence, everytime we consume we are reminded of our fate...
Ra'uf Lucien Simon
To contact Lucien Simon visit
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