“THE WELL” by André Borelli

“The Well” is a film that from the first minutes turns out to be an all-encompassing experience. Behind the exquisite “mise en scene”, André Borelli creates a subtle and refined symbolic language, which traverses the narrative and aesthetic layout of the film. This refined reworking of the cinematographic language makes “The Well” a little jewel of experimentation, poetic and courageous. Through a story with tight rhythms, built on a solid screenplay, the film goes deeper and deeper into the darker aspects of the human soul, leaving no way out for the viewer, inevitably attracted by the compelling narrative. Going down into darkness, the cinematographic language seems to become more hostile, and the frame of the screen tightens like a noose around faces and details, in a claustrophobic grip that tightens images. André Borelli thus constructs an apparent chaos, in which faces, hands, landscapes, and profiles alternate. The result is a disturbing and at the same time attractive story, which expresses with empathy and sensitivity the anxiety that runs through contemporary society. On a purely aesthetic level, Borelli’s filmic approach is extremely revolutionary and seems to recall certain pictorial suggestions, completely new for the cinematographic language. The technical sectors have succeeded in extending this aesthetic power in all fields, from cinematography to make-up, which is sometimes delirious, theatrical, but always appropriate. Music, a fundamental component of this work, is well suited to a dynamic and sagacious script, and in the end it is a song that seems to open to the hope of a harmony that is still possible. “The Well” is a constant discovery, a film capable of surpassing even the language of cinema and trespassing into pure art.