Boris Lehman - Couple, Regards, Positions (le mariage de l’eau avec le feu)

Limited edition DVD of the previously unseen film "Couple, Regards, Positions (le mariage de l'eau avec le feu)" made by Boris Lehman for his 2022 exhibition at the Film Gallery in Paris, France.

In Couple/Regards/Positions, Boris Lehman and Nadine Wandel stage their love through the opposition of black and white, triangle and globe, the two triangles that make up the Star of David, a finger and an ear, a mouth that speaks and a hand that writes, the alchemical symbols of water and fire. The positions mimic their relationship in turn of seduction, complementarity, attraction, avoidance, domination or indifference. The couple here is always the opposition of two opposites that never manage to become one. The close-up brings out the contradictory, irreducible essence of the other, whatever the variations proposed to express the love relationship. At the same time, each exists only as a fragment of the association. It's always two by two, not one by one: the conjunction here never ceases to operate cascading disjunctions. Boris Lehman makes no secret of his formalist, Mallarméan inspiration. This allows him to return to the laws of composition and montage of silent cinema, notably Le Chien Andalou, and also Man Ray.
-Yvan Lardeau (Cahiers du Cinéma/ June 83)

Double-sided mirror
Water and fire. Water extinguishes fire, and fire boils water, making it evaporate. They have some difficulty getting along. They can't marry without one of them disappearing, yet they're inexorably drawn to each other, needing each other to exist.
Couple/ Regards/Positions (the marriage of water and fire) is an attempt at alchemical cinema.
Two characters-a man and a woman-play with each other, looking at each other, confronting each other, attacking each other, even mutilating each other, in an attempt to communicate, to unite. Every look, every position, every action is ritualistic and symbolic.
There is no set. Only objects and geometric shapes-circles, squares, triangles-suspended in the air and placed on the floor. Metaphorical, abstract and pictorial, this is a film about black and white (in black and white), empty and full (sound and silence), about the impossible coming together of opposites, of plus and minus, hot and cold, high and low, shadow and light. Water and fire.
Conceived as a collage, the film takes on its full meaning, as in dreams, in the associations and analogies of the elements it brings into play.
Beyond the magic of the images, the sado-masochism of certain scenes and the esotericism of the subject matter, Couple/Regards/Positions (the marriage of water and fire) is a film of solitude, suffering and love.
-Boris Lehman

I wonder if this film was ever anything more than a game? We had set up gestural exchanges between us based on a balance of power. I had the strange impression of a permanent battle with the camera. It had become living, animal matter, and it was a matter of who could hypnotize the other. Was I acting or not? I can't answer that question, even today. I can't recognize myself in the film. It's an incredible, ideal image of me, of the woman I am, the woman I'd like to be, the woman I'm not.
-Nadine Wandel