University of Cape Town – FAM1000S

Still Frame Analysis Essay

‘Lucky Guy’:
Or, why it’s not hard to love The Dreamers if you happen to be a cinephile

Giannetti’s Elements

1. Dominant

– Isabelle’s particularly illuminated forehead, eyes and shoulder.
– They’re only just off-centre and we’re naturally attracted to faces before any other human elements in such a two-shot.
– However, Matthew’s face is in flat darkness so the lighting contrast with Isabelle’s form emphasizes her overall beauty and centrality.

2. Lighting Key

– High-contrast: almost white light from an overhead key lamp creates blinding spots on Matthew’s nape and Isabelle’s forehead but otherwise leaves blind shadows on his face & body as well as a purer blackness in the room- as seen in the mirror in the top- right corner.

– Low-key: High-contrast here also creates a moody and somewhat erotic colour- noirish effect from the shadow-strewn characters and only occasional patches of light seen on her shirt and the counter and walls in the bathroom.

3. Shot and Camera Proxemics

– Medium-shot, though relatively intimate with the frame’s dreamers so as to reflect Matthew’s confinement. We see down to their waists for details of posture but its kind of clear there’s a potentially tighter in-set close-up just of their arms and profiles which might further close up the composition.

4. Angle

– Slightly high-angle, tilted down by just a few degrees from the figures’ shoulder- height, but to all intents and purposes neutral.
– Probably just there to include the contents of the counter and juxtapose the mirror- doubling effect better.

5. Color Values

– Yellow-brown light glare, muted white and the beige and pitch-black surroundings are the predominant contrasts (besides the insignificant fruit-colours of the toiletries). – Heat of the key-light imitates a very warm exterior shot, makes Matthew seem extra stuffy in his suit and Isabelle more natural and earthy in her barer top.
– Further adds to the aforementioned light-contrast of the dark and sidelined Matthew with the warm, white and central Isabelle.

6. Lens

– Wide-angle to accommodate the dreamers, their reflections and the counter as if the whole room could eventually matter to the movie.
– Could also, of course, be cropped to a standard lens frame that just includes the two- shot but then you wouldn’t have the mirror’s nice rhyme to full the space of the bathroom.

7. Subsidiary Contrasts

– Isabelle’s white top, by virtue of its relative lightness, is next seen.
– Then the illuminated and colour-flecked patches on the wall and counter.
– And the last warm patches on Matthew’s nape and raised hand before -Finally, the darker ‘redoubled frame’ of the dreamers in the mirror leaves us to inspect the black portions of the rest.

8. Density

– Neither chaotic nor stark, the dreamers and their costumes are elegantly simple and, as I say, redoubled in the mirror while the cabinet, lamp and counter in the background are pure furnishings.
– Though the toiletries do add a relative paint-range in the bottom-right, they don’t really distract or take away from the moderation in the rest of the frame.

9. Composition

– As somewhat mentioned, the 2D design of the frame works off the visual rhyme of the dreamers’ reflection in the mirror, which, while neatly segmenting the frame into vertical thirds, causes an overbalance to the left as the larger Isabelle lightly pushes the larger Matthew into his own relatively tight Third.

– Of course, the dreamers themselves are foregrounded before anything with a light density of bathroom furnishings to full out the frame and the mirror creating a whole other frame-within-the-frame.

10. Form

– Closed form, because a kind of 3D symmetry prevails in the ‘diagonal’ distance between the dreamers and their reflections.
– As somewhat mentioned, the Rule of Thirds is neatly satisfied: by the respective placings- left to right – of Matthew, Isabelle and their reflections vertically and- bottom to top – the counter and waists, torsos and arms, and heads and cabinet horizontally.

– Thanks to the mirror too, there’s seemingly no information excluded about the room itself and not much more to discover either left or right of the frame.

11. Framing

-Tight: Matthew’s confined to his own third, as mentioned, with Isabelle’s intimacy reflecting the camera’s own closed form connection with the characters.
– Instead of creating an expansive depth the mirror just shows how small the bathroom really is, disclosing a ‘fourth’ confining wall in the frame.

12. Depth

-About two and a half planes I’d say- the initial closeness of the dreamers to the frame, the ‘half-plane’ of the counter & cabinet and the in-set plane of the mirror’s reversed copy of the first plane.
-In this sense, the ‘half-plane’ is a mediating transition between the reflections, creating the whole 3D symmetry effect previously alluded to.

13. Character Placement

– The dreamers therefore take the foregrounded left and the backgrounded right in this 3D construct- probably just for the nice beauty of the symmetrical effect but also to repeat Matthew’s confinement in both the left of the actual frame and the left of the mirror’s frame-within-the-frame.

14. Staging Positions

– The dreamers are conspicuously indifferent to the camera, Isabelle turned (or turning) against our perspective and engaging her interest in Matthew while Matthew himself, eyes completely closed, is at the whim of her actions and focused on her gesture.
– This indifference is then compounded by the reflected figures’ own turned backs and unseen faces.

15. Character Proxemics

– There’s increasingly less space between the dreamers throughout the scene, made apparent in this frame with their intimate distance intensified by Isabelle’s hand raised to Matthew’s downturned mouth.

Now just the general impression:

Though I am quite biased in my interpretations- having seen The Dreamers twice in the last year and a half- I think the particular brilliance of the frame in question is in it’s microcosmic romance. What is, in the context of the scene, a moment of bewildering intimacy for Matthew is conveyed- immediately and unaided- in this shot by his and Isabelle’s positioning, gestures and shadows. We can guess that the

dreamers are not as close as they appear, but, with Isabelle placed in dead center of the frame just in front of Matthew in an angled bathroom, the distance between the two comes to appear flattened on the screen, making her raised finger look like a lover’s hush and Matthew’s hand seem like its reaching to angle her chin for a kiss. Of course it could also be a questioning gesture, but the image is composed so as to appear psychically in sync; the tight framing and juxtaposition of the dreamers and their reflections presents a repeated encounter of mutual interests. The bathroom setting and counter add an oddly domestic edge- seeming an unlikely place for such an uncertain moment of intimacy to occur with a relative stranger. And to my mind this contrast of beauty and awkwardness explicitly evidences Matthew’s guiding perspective- both in the frame and in the movie as a whole- as his obscured self is here sidelined by Isabelle’s comparative bareness and beauty, while his image is unlit and hers magnified. Such is love for most young men at least.

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