Lauren Vroegindewey’s experimental short film, My Bed, is drawn from a twenty four hour performance in Asbury Park, New Jersey and a five hour performance in the Ethan Cohen Cube: Beacon New York. Throughout the film, Vroegindewey lies on a pile of sheets – we could hardly call it a bed – in a room or on a rocky beach. The sheets are stained and there are pomegranates that Vroegindewey alternately eats and crushed with her hands. It is, in short, a slightly disturbing portrait of a women suffering some unknown agony for unknown reasons. As an experimental film, it is quite effective at evoking a dark mood. This is a film that will stay with you and keep you wondering about its meaning.
The film was shot and processed in such a way that the audience never gets a very clear look at either Vroegindewey or her surroundings. There are various effects that make the scenes appear faded, old and maybe even corroded. These effects could be a reflection of the interior experience of the artist. We’re left feeling as off kilter as the artist looks.
At least as striking as the visual aspect of My Bed is the sound design. Just as we never get a very clear look at the woman, we can never get much of a handle on what we’re hearing. There are ambient sounds as well as human voices that are nearly impossible to decipher. This, surely, is intentional and meant to inspire varied interpretations from listeners. I thought, for example, that many of the sounds came from a train station. This juxtaposition of lying in bed – and in ‘my’ bed, where we’re most at home and most still, with a train station where we’re on the move and not at all at home, gives us a glimpse into the artist’s state of mind: she may be in her bed, but she is profoundly restless. Similarly, ‘her’ bed is, for a large part of the film, on a rocky, wet, uncomfortable beach. One’s bed is almost by definition the most sheltered place we can be, but in this case, it is in one of the most exposed places one can find oneself. Again, this is a case of being at home and not at home.
There are several similar juxtapositions. The woman, with white sheets stained red, either from pomegranate juice or blood, or both, appears sometimes to be asleep and at others we could almost imagine her as a victim of some violent crime. We see that proximity here of sleep to death. Or more particularly, we see a similarity between a profoundly restless sleep and a violent death. This motif is underscored by the above-mentioned pomegranates. Fruit should provide a nectar of life, but here it seems more to symbolize death, rot and blood. Pomegranates are, probably not coincidentally, frequently depicted in memento mori painting, that are meant to remind us the fleeting nature of life and the ever-present threat of death.
Near the end of the film, I thought I heard a voice saying something along the lines of ‘leave the body,’ and the artist does seem to leave her body. Her double, or perhaps her soul, walks to the edge of the rocks and waves a white sheet, perhaps a white flag of surrender. One could go so far as to interpret this to mean that the artist has gone to her eternal rest and that her real bed is in the beyond. The title itself is ambiguous. There is, as I mentioned above, no actual bed in any normal sense of the word. Which leaves us to wonder if the earth itself is her bed. Or whether her bed is the situation that has brought her to her place of suffering (she made her bed and now she’s going to lie in it). For such a seemingly straightforward film, it is grounds for extraordinarily rich interpretation.
Vroegindewey is a filmmaker and performance artist, as well as being a painter and sculptor. She wrote, directed and stars in My Bed. She also created the sound design. Her other films include Crane Wife and Cleansing. My Bed has been making the festival rounds, and so far has won Best Sound Design at KIMFF.
By: Darida Rose
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.