Adolescence is a fascinating and complex period, especially in its most psychological aspect. The proximity to maturity and the awakening of sexuality is palpable from that long frontier in which you still do not know if it is appropriate to play or if what you have to do is discover the world or in a version that does not always end well: thinking about discovering the world as if it were a game. There is also some unleashed passion, uncontrolled energy that can lead to a conflictive stage.
This Lize Spit's first film, Thawing, presents us with a story that goes from the sweetness of childhood to the cruelty of the adolescent defeated by powerful and irrepressible drives. And in the passage from one extreme to the other, the feeling of guilt emerges. To what extent is a still immature being guilty of his actions? Legally, the responsibility is reduced and blurred, in the personal domain, the guilt and the penalty is decided by the person who suffers it.
Eva ends up being the victim of her childhood friends: Laurens and Pim. Until the disastrous day in which they raised the discovery of sexuality as a joint game without any filter, until that moment the friendship had advanced naturally, but as I say it all ended in a very bad way when the three submitted to the dictation of their lower and twisted drives.
The girl lived with that event in her consciousness for more than a decade. But after that time he decides to return to Bovenmeer, the place where everything happened. The abandonment of a trauma, the intention to cover it somewhere in the soul can end up intoxicating you from the inside. Eva is a victim of her past and of herself, ready to do anything to find peace.
The Laurens and Pim boys are no longer the same. For them the past of that day is a hazy memory. But Eva will see to it that they revive, that they assume their guilt and punishment, a punishment that must be carried out with the same intensity as those years of silence about her inner ruin have meant for her.
You can buy the book Thawing, the debut feature by young Belgian author Lize Spit, here: