Film review: Electric Indigo by Jean- Julien Collette

What is a family? In the last few months, especially in France, this question has often popped up in the media because of the recent law allowing homosexual marriage. A law that is not approved by those who consider a family to only be possible through the union of a man and a woman. Electric Indigo, the first solo short film by Belgian filmmaker Jean-Julien Collette, tries to analyse the new family structures, sexuality and the discovery of the self-identity in a thriller-like way. 

In Electric Indigo, we meet Indigo, a 20-something year old girl who recalls her life from her birth to the event that changed her life forever for us to understand how she discovered her own identity and the way she understands love. Raised by two heterosexual fathers united by the bonds of a 'non-carnal' marriage, Indigo knows what pure and unconditional love is thanks to this untraditional family. When she turns twelve, her biological mother -an old friend of her fathers who got paid to get their baby-, will try to get her back, affecting their loving familiar structure. 

Electric Indigo may look like an unusual romantic comedy when it starts. Indigo's voiceover leads us through the origins of her birth in the framework of this unusual but equally valid family, although soon the film turns into a drama with a narrative touch of thriller when intolerance takes over Indigo's mother's unstable heart after feeling excluded from the happy family.

Brilliantly interpreted by adults Rubén Tomás, Tony Denman, Christelle Cornil and débutante teen actress Margot, Collette's movie can seem too inspired by a bucolic and hipster way of filming, even if in some parts of it (the introduction of the characters) this works perfectly. Electric Indigo is an interesting demonstration of how family structured are irrelevant as long as true love is present. Even if the film comes to this conclusion in a cheesy way, the existence of this kind of movies is necessary, especially at this critical moment when it seems that intolerance is dominating certain parts of the European society.

Author: Lucía Ros Serra*

Title: Electric Indigo

Director: Jean- Julien Collette

Year: 2013

Run time: 24'

Genre: Fiction

Country: Belgium

Contact details: jjmovie@gmail.com

 

 

*Every day Cineuropa Shorts, in collaboration with Nisimazine and Lago Film Fest (18-26 July), offers you film reviews and interviews made in Lago by the brilliant Nisimazine’s team of young journalists.