Waiting For A Sign: The Genius Of 'Genius Loci'

Revisiting Adrien Mérigeau's darkly colourful night of the soul.

A quick word before we get into today’s members’ post: last weekend, to my surprise and joy, I discovered that Move Madly had been recommended in a Substack Reads article curated by Coleen Baik. I’m touched by the kind words from Coleen, whose own newsletter, The Line Between, is full of thoughtful, elegantly written reflections on the creative life. Move Madly is still fairly young, and this kind of encouragement means a lot. And with that, on to today’s post…

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“All around me, I find chaos,” says Reine in voiceover as she faces the city at night. “It’s always there. It just changes in scale. You can’t stop it. You can only watch it. Listen to it.”

Genius Loci (2020) is not a film that spells itself out; Reine’s words are as explicit as it gets. They come four and a half minutes into Adrien Mérigeau’s 15-minute short, whose suspicion of orderliness has by this point been established through language and images. Chance and exploration are the film’s organising principles. So we understand Reine, even if we don’t experience the world as she does. We know that Genius Loci will show things her way.