“Gates” by Josh Pickup

The complexity of the feelings told in “Gates” is counterbalanced by the splendid simplicity of Josh Pickup’s staging. The result is an intimate tale that doesn’t even seem captured by a camera: it just seems to flow in front of our eyes like a tangle of familiar and deep emotions. The screenplay (written by Pickup himself) shines for its spontaneity and delicacy and helps to give the film a natural and splendid humanity atmosphere. It is evident that the writing work was also completed by the work of the two leading actresses, whose connection on the screen seems anything but fictitious. The visual narrative chosen by the director favors a discreet look at the two protagonists, very often together on the screen. Between them, nature completes the formal play of lights and contrasts without ever imposing an aesthetic look and an end in itself.

But “Gates” is not a bucolic look at the English countryside and there is nothing illusory about this meeting between two sisters who meet after a long time. What Pickup describes is a more complete perspective on love, this wonderful and cruel ambiguous force, which forces us, piece by piece, to disperse ourselves in someone else. So we begin to suffer. In this sense, “Gates” sounds like an elegy, but it is a nostalgic and conscious elegy, of how true beauty has a price. Josh Pickup has made a true and poignant, profound and wonderful film, which uses every minute of his to tell us something more about us.