D is for Distance

(Emma Matthews & Christopher Petit, Finland, 2025)

“We know more about outer space than we know about the human brain”. This sums up the situation of Louis Petit, sufferer of a rare, frighteningly debilitating form of compound epilepsy that shattered years of his young life and erased his memory of childhood.

Louis’ parents, multimedia artists Christopher (aka Chris) Petit and Emma Matthews, tell Louis’ ongoing, utterly heartbreaking story through an extraordinary archive of footage that includes documentation of his seizures.

The family finds itself up against the unbending bureaucracy of Britain’s inhumane health care regulations – and seeks provisional solutions elsewhere in Europe.

Yet this is only one layer of a remarkable collage-essay. The father’s unmade film project concerning two Americans, writer William Burroughs and former CIA chief James Angleton – both addicted, obsessive and paranoid – provides a wider frame to explore the links between “technology and the subconscious”, capitalism and the “inner reality” of the mind.

Using a stunningly edited array of film clips (a Godardian Histoire(s) echo), art works (including Louis’ rich depictions of his “visionary” condition), sound textures and road-movie travels – reminding of us of earlier projects by Petit & Matthews – D is for Distance focuses simultaneously on the microcosm of personal pain and the macrocosm of social decline.

The details are bleak, but the film is a beacon of hope.

© Adrian Martin 27 November 2024