Diane's Winter

“I fell asleep”. It starts with a woman standing at the bedside of another one. A woman way more tired than the sick one she should take care of. It starts with a handshake between them, soft yet strong at the same time. Kent Jones relies on this image – so simple and however so difficult to shoot – in order to lead us into his first fiction feature. Since then the hug between two hands becomes the missing image in a journey which explores and exposes other people’s pain and the grief of those who take care of others.  

The mise en scene plays with ellipses and recurring shots (the street seen from the windshield), the attention is focused on details, those anonymous elements which can fulfill a whole life. And probably would stand even after the life is over. Even if remaining on a descriptive level, Kent’s writing succeeds in order to shift the topic from a personal to a collective level. Wonderfully played by Mary Kay Place, Diane portraits all lonely women, dealing with their children’s issues, being able to help whoever is in need. Diane is not the center of the movie: she is its engine. She is the one gently leading us in a place which is more intimate than the one described in the first part: winter Massachusetts becomes a state of soul. The story is freed from its consequentiality and embraces sequences suspended between dream, desire and memory. Kent Jones gives his movie a U-turn: Diane embodies a journey not leading to us but to the inner soul, something we can’t name even if, time after time, it keeps staring at us.