When You Fall into a Trance

2014, 72 minutes

When You Fall Into a Trance tells the story of Dominique – a neuroscientist who both researches and manifests the belief that memories are stored in flesh.

When you fall into a trance traces the relationships between Dominique, a neuroscientist, Simon, her patient, Tony, a synchronized swimmer, and Hugo, an aid worker. Simon is suffering from the loss of his proprioception, his sense of the relative position of his body parts as well as his understanding of the effort required to move them. His vision seems essential to his physical agency—if he cannot see his body, then the movement and control of his gestures become unmoored. As the film unfolds, Dominique’s fascination with the complexities of the mind-body relationship exemplified by Simon’s condition spins beyond her work and into her life. When you fall into a trance places the characters, and us along with them, in an unstable orbit in which the perceptual aids of vision, location and language slide and refract, superimpose or splinter, and the supposed transparency of their role in our awareness of ourselves and others is called into question. Setting in motion the intricacies of human relationships, in which bodies betray words, and touch and music seduce memory, Wardill’s film is equally sinister and tender. Throughout the film, actions distort, gestures fracture, and deceptions are uncovered as the tension and release of bodies and speech reveal the complexities of memory and the possibilities of imagination. When you fall into a trance is the latest in a series of Wardill’s films that share a common interest in the complexities of communication and representation, the limitations and imprecision of language, and the individual nature of imagination.

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