TRIBUTE TO MONIQUE RUTLER

Violin Solo

by Ana Catarina Pereira

The 90’s would be a remarkable period in the History of the Portuguese Cinema. A recently won democracy (1974), the country’s entry into the European Union (1986) and the attempt to promulgate measures that fostered equal opportunities generated debate and questioning. Some of the more dense films then released – by Teresa Villaverde, Pedro Costa, Margarida Gil, João Canijo, Solveig Nordlund or João César Monteiro – reveal, as mentioned in previous chapters, fractional distances, while denouncing the numerous problems that suffocate certain segments of society. The images of children and adolescents who grow up and are educated in a country of marginalized suburbs, the instability amongst the new and perennial injustices would be dominant motives in the cinematography of those years. In this context, Monique Rutler decides to make a period film. Looking back, she questioned the present and envisioned a future that could fall back on human rights, if due attention were not given to the powers that have been instituted, by consenting to the discriminatory treatment of women and the working classes. After intense research, the French-Portuguese filmmaker concluded a book about the story of Adelaide Coelho da Cunha – daughter of the founder of the newspaper Diário de Notícias and the first wife of one of her directors – hospitalized and subjected to undue psychiatric treatment treatment because she lived an adulterous love. In Violin Solo, as a matter of fact Adelaide is twice hospitalized at the the Conde de Ferreira hospital in Porto in November in November 1918 and in March 1919. In August of that year, she is allowed out. The evolution evolution of these events is synthetically shown shown in the film, in sequences of images ominated by different shades of blue, associated with introspective and / or depressive states Those who watch have access to a small room, an iron bed and the table where Adelaide writes in her diary. From the dialogue between the doctors, information about her medication comes out, while the viewer is confronted with the automation of the nurses and hospital employees, who fulfill obligations that they never question. Adelaide’s contact with other patients reinforces, in turn, the notion of the strangeness of the place and the possibility of escape that it manages to undertake before being captured again. The question goes beyond the characterization of these characters with dysfunctional behaviors, focusing on the way the images establish discontinuity and destabilization movements. It is in the plasticity and sonority of Violin Solo, in the relationship established between bodies and spaces, between the time lived (about ten months) and the staged time (about 60 minutes of film), that political tensions come to fruition. In this respect, Monique Rutler’s choice of making a fiction and simultaneously questioning the dubious boundary between the living world and the staged world is also political. The relationship between field and out-of-field represents the tension between the body of Adelaide and the body of institutions. It is not a symbolic conflict, but an immanent clash, constituted at each scene and exacerbated by each cut. Due to the alarming ease with which the psychiatric illness is diagnosed, Violin Solo launched the debate about various bioethical and deontological issues, challenging those who watch to stand before the undesirable and perverse of institutions of power. In the case of a reconstitution of the period corresponding to the beginning of the First Republic, it also illustrates the prejudices of a patriarchal society and the incapacity of acceptance of the recent possibility of divorce, the resource being shown as a “double-edged sword”: 1910, women have the legal possibility to put an end to a marriage union. However, the fact that they rarely work ends up dispossessing everything, as Adelaide, daughter of the founder of the newspaper, which her husband directs. In the film, the re-creation of this closed and compact historical context is further embodied in the moment when Adelaide’s son and sister admit the infidelity, rejecting immediately the hypothesis of a conscious, lucid and desired attitude of their own. Violin Solo thus reflects a reality in which the woman’s independence is not recognized, expecting from the mother and wife an eternal example of virtue, obedience and dedication to the family. The discovery of the betrayed husband, in turn, generates a social pressure that compels him to act – a necessity that is opposed to Adelaide’s apathy and conformism in the face of his initial betrayal, reproducing a whole series of stereotypes about masculine virility and feminine submission. The Portuguese society, on the other hand, deals with the in submission accepting the label imposed by the well-known health professionals: Adelaide Coelho da Cunha could only be “crazy”. By reproducing disgust at the differences of ages and status of the two lovers, Monique Rutler mimics the idea that sexuality is linked to youth and circumscribed to elements at the same social level. The fact that Adelaide’s sister supports her brother-in-law and agrees with her hospitalization reveals the historical lack of support and solidarity among women, previously exposed in the lap of a beauvoirian vision. In a personal interview, Monique Rutler assumes that the disclosure of some scenes was purposeful: “I do not know why, but we (women) have always been that way. This situation, like all the others, happened that way and I made a point of portraying it in the film. “From a feminist perspective, the deconstruction of the archetypal “woman-adulteress” is also notorious, promiscuous and unbalanced. Contrary to what the fi ne life of Adelaide Coelho da Cunha could anticipate, her character is not presented as a figure inspired by Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina, who gives in to the temptation of lust, being overcome by the melancholy and unsustainable lightness of the hours that pass. Through the eyes of Monique Rutler, Adelaide is a woman in love who, in giving up her fortune, minimizes possible moral infractions of adultery. Under the same circumstances, Adelaide could have opted for a situation of less tragic consequences, maintaining the extramarital relationship, the marriage of appearances, and the intense sociability demanded by her status. In assuming what she feels, the character reveals an inadequate courage and determination to her time, counteracting active/male and passive/ female duality. Not resorting to her exposure as an erotic object, the figure represents action in such a way that its power coincides with the eye of the watcher. For all these reasons, Violin Solo can be seen as an intrinsically political film, which points to several criticisms: the bourgeois tradition, which consents to the adultery of Alfredo da Cunha, but is scandalized by the flight of Adelaide; to moral standards that restrict the love of certain canons; the expectations placed on the woman, wife, mother and reference figure in the social and cultural fi elds; to the curriculum and to the integrity of three physicians recognized by the recommended scientific advances.

Ana Catarina Pereira In A Mulher-Cineasta: Da arte pela arte a uma estética da diferenciação (LabCom Books, 2016)