The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire

This succinct, elliptical feature by American filmmaker and visual artist Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich is not so much about its subject as it is a cinematic song or poem for her.

If this chamber-piece film is a little opaque, perhaps that is because Césaire herself is opaque.

This film essay ultimately argues unconvincingly against art’s right to imagination.

Hunt-Erlich anyway conveys forest stillness, and something of the intellectual and ecological atmosphere of Césaire’s life, the landscape in which she moved. Saturated 16mm film adds to this tangibility even as...the director’s subject stays elusive.