Claude Schmitz explores the existential uncertainty theatre workers have been living in since Covid-19 in Lucie Lose Her Horse. Theatre work always is precarious. A successful show in one market, won’t be in another and can close much earlier than expected. Covid-19 added another layer to this as practically overnight theatres everywhere shut down. People who made their living there found themselves out of work.
Lucie (played by Lucie Debay) is one such actor. We meet Lucie with her daughter while she’s staying with her grandmother. She takes part in a holistic healing therapy session, which kick starts her journey of self-discovery and the film’s narrative. There are a pair of nice conversations with women before she embarks on the journey (but after we’ve already entered the first stage of the fantasy), where she talks about her newly acquired sword for her journey. One woman talks about the sword she had for her journey, and her grandmother vaguely recalls once having a sword herself. The idea of community, that although she’s currently lost and searching for meaning/connection, she’s not alone. Others have been there before. People have made it to the other side of this journey. It’s a pleasant grounding force to the film, a hopeful note.
Once she sets out on her journey, now attired as a knight, the film fully enters the medieval world, and Lucie loses her horse as the title dictates. But she’s not the only one. She meets two other women knights (played by Hélène Bressiant and Judith Williquet) who have also lost their horses. They all start looking for their horses. However, the longer they journey, the less they can remember what they’re seeking. An apt analogy for the pandemic because the longer it’s gone on, the harder it is to hold onto the thread. The same is true for dreams. You can have lucid moments in them, but quickly find yourself swept back up in them.
The film also touches on motherhood and the life of a performer. As part of her dream journey, she had to leave her daughter. Performers have to leave their children all the time to go to work, be it missing bedtimes because of evening performances, or having to leave town for roles. However, this obstacle is heightened by Covid with young children too young to be vaccinated. Taking a role involves close contact with lots of people. While productions test their cast and crew repeatedly, as we saw over December with all the temporary and permanent closures of theatre productions, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a risk of infection. Taking a role right now can mean choosing to leave your child with another family member to ensure their safety.
Claude Schmitz’s theatre background and sensibilities come to play, especially once the characters are transported to a theatre space. The staging, especially the way the three women sit at the table, is straight out of a stage director’s playbook, and it works. It plays into the strength of the film’s dreamy world, the background nature of the characters, and the allusions it’s making. The initial transition from the hazy-dreamy world of the medieval landscape to the loud theatre setting with dialogue, tone, and new characters introduced similar to that of a Shakespearean comedy (fitting as they’re meant to be putting on King Lear), is at first jarring. But so is the nature of dreams.
What is Lucie Loses Her Horse about? It’s about Lucie, who knew who she was when she inhabited a role on stage. Taking on a role, she could free the parts from within her. Now she’s rudderless. Her drive is missing, her focus fractured and split. Without theatre, who is she? How does she get back to who she was?
Lucie Loses Her Horse premiered at the premiered at the 51st International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Bright Future section.