Face, mirror, screen: reflections regarding the cinema of Walter Hugo Khouri

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to undertake a brief analysis of the relationship between the face and the presence of mirrors in the work of Brazilian director Walter Hugo Khouri. The faces in Khouri’s work are often impassive and difficult to decipher, while the director creates several scenes in which the characters observe their own faces reflected in mirrors, a gesture that can be associated with the mythical narcissistic figure and to the idea of ​​mortality. On the other hand, the inexpressiveness of these faces, when concatenated with other planes in the editing, seems to suggest emotions, as in the Kulechovian experiments. We propose here to establish an exercise of analysis by articulating the actoral gestuality, the symbolism of the mirror and the specular character that the cinematographic faces can possess in Khouri’s work.