Object: Perpetual Mirror

Director: Cecil Lavie, the reclusive surrealist whose previous work, "L Renaissance d'un Paon" (2015), was a mesmerizing meditation on plumage and temporality.

In "Perpetual Mirror," Lavie collaborates with an anonymous roboticist to twist the banal into the absurd. As its title suggests, the mise-en-scène invites us to observe our observance. The mirror itself, a standard rectangle of reflective glass, is unassuming initially. However, the scene shifts as the objet kleineren, a tiny autonomous camera, whirs to life within. It glides along the mirror's edge, capturing your reflection, your intrigue, and your unease. The camera's motives are indeterminate, like the antagonist in a Tarkovsky film, driven by an inexplicable force.

A Godardian intertitle appears: "*Regarde, regardé*" – "Look, looked at." The self-consciousness is palpable, interrupting our voyeurism. The mise-en-scène encapsulates an existential angst, reminding us that we are not just watching, but being watched. The mirror doesn't simply reflect; it refracts, disrupts, and desires. It's as if the mirror itself has achieved sentience, recoiling from the gaze it initially demanded.

I left early, halfway through the third act when the mirror began exhibiting glitches – streams of binary code cascading down the glass. The experience became too unsettling, too unatural. Yet, I couldn't help but wonder what other scenes of surveillance awaited.

Rating: Trois cigarettes – "Perpetual Mirror" is an unsettling exploration of observation and anxiety. While it falls short of the transcendental ponderings of Tarkovsky or Akerman, it manages to discomfort and intrigue, which might be Lavie's objective after all.

On the death of cinema: The silver screen fades, not into darkness, but into a reflective surface, questioning our role as passive observers.