The film begins once the sun has set. It’s Marseille, with milk on the stove. The milk boils, overflows, and takes its liquid liberty down the slopes of the city to the port. Its movement is continuous. From a timid white trickle it becomes an impetuous stream, as if along its course it had gained faith in its powers to restore the city, to reawaken it with its vital qualities, fertile and primitive. In its symbolic power the nourishing liquid becomes a guide to reading the city, an agent of the environment’s revelation. “Milk is an uncontrollable element, making its way without predetermination, drawing a portrait in the negative of a city—even revealing it. Almost a snake, it’s a liquid animality,” Marie Bovo proclaims.
Annabelle Grugnon