52 Films by Women Vol 5. 47. LOVE ME TENDER (Director: Klaudia Reynicke)
We see an open field. A young girl and a young woman run towards each other and collide intentionally. What is going on? For a long time in Swiss-Peruvian filmmaker Klaudia Reynicke’s film, Love Me Tender , that is the last we see of the outside world. The main character, Seconda (Barbara Giordano) is an agoraphobic. She lounges around in the family apartment in her underwear practising dance routines. She appears to be expecting a phone call or at least is excited when the telephone rings, but then her father (Maurizio Tabani) unplugs it. (There are no mobile phones in Seconda’s household.) Seconda hisses at the white-haired cat, Milou, whom she perceives as a competitor for attention – they are both home bodies. It appears to us that Seconda has been traumatised by her sister’s death but, as we discover, this is a girl she did not know. Her sister, she explains later, was crushed by a car. Seconda is the second child and this time her parents are going to protect her. But tha...