On belonging, mothers and daughters, mourning, magic and life as it is

Beatriz Batarda and Margarida Cardoso, interviewed by Anabela Mota Ribeiro.

http://www.publico.pt/culturaipsilon/noticia/falar-de-um-filme-para-falar-da-vida-1686008

“Of Beauty and Consolation”/ interview with John M. Coetzee

”I think there is an explanation for this affinity that transcends the literary relationship, and that I think has to do with the melancholy and anxiety of the search. We seek, tirelessly – like the character, Rita – an answer to something that has no answer… because that answer is contained in the mystery of beauty and of life (and death). In the film, Rita, grieving the loss of her daughter, embarks on a quest for the ‘truth about the death of Yvone Kane’. At bottom, it is that searching that makes her survive. Yvone, or what is left of Yvone in the fallible and ambiguous idea of memory in everyone that Rita meets along the way, is a metaphorical pretext for that never-ending search. It is, at the same time, an expression of the impossibility of fixing evil… of repairing the irreparable.” – Margarida Cardoso

(Interview with one of Margarida Cardoso’s inspiring writers, John M. Coetzee)