The Spectacle Is Vulnerable
Notes on Nicotine Love
The third section is experimental in its story telling, cinematography, sound, art direction, mise en scene, and use of location.
We are shooting at a beautiful location, the Malvern hills, but we are not going to show it.
This is a statement on the prison like lifestyle of modern life and the separation from nature we experience on a mass scale, as if to say: ”You live in a beautiful World, but you just can’t see it.”
Angela and Eric are locked in a World like this. They live their separate lives and their life as a married couple but what they experience is not real. The film aims to expose this through the change in style from section to section.
In the first they are masked by their extravagant décor, the mise en scene bleeds into their lives and they hide behind it.
In the second section this is stripped away somewhat but it still remains. They can no longer hide behind it because they stand out against the mise en scene and they are forced to play out their problems in front of us.
In the third section the mise en scene is completely stripped away and the characters are exposed on top of the Malvern hills, all they have is their basic furniture and appliances. It is too late for them but it is the right time for reflection. They are exposed to the elements but they do not know that. That is why we shoot it in this way. With telephoto close ups so the location is just blurred completely. The characters are still locked their prison like way of life and relationship. That is why Eric is just as trapped as Angela, because they both live the same life. They are blind and so the camera must be so too.
