Losing Ground
(Losing Ground)

The foremost quality of Losing Ground is the writing, with its nuanced but direct dialectic, around an intellectual university professor crushed by her painter husband and her mother. Overstepping the expected racial dialectics, the film brutally targets the disdain of the egocentric male artist, be he black or white. The wonderful movement of this feminist film is to find an escape route through the protagonist’s profession: she is writing a thesis on the question of ecstasy. In a magnificent dialogue, she becomes aware that she also experiences moments of ecstasy in her research work, and that she too knows about « losing ground ». This recognition of intellectual ecstasy is of rare depth and our gratitude goes to Kathleen Collins for having made room for this power of ideas. Stéphane Delorme