The first time we see our girl, she is a baby. The image of
her is shaking, occasionally flickering black, and tinged sepia. She’s
crying; a woman lifts her into the air, spinning her around. Smiles break out
on both of their faces, and the woman suddenly notices that we are there. She
carries her baby over to us, kissing the dazed girl’s cheek. They wave, the
woman holding the baby’s small and chubby hand up to us and moving it gently
from side to side.
We
lose sight of them for a moment, blinded by darkness, until the girl appears in
front of us again. She’s older now, by a few years, with locks of golden hair
framing her young, cherubic face. She looks at us momentarily, staring blankly
with her mouth slightly agape, showing two new teeth. Briskly she turns away
from us to concentrate on driving through the garden’s yellow-green grass in
her scarlet play car. All of the colours are bright and we know that in the
sky, even though we can’t see it, the sun will be shining.
The
image fades before suddenly, in front of us, we see the girl. People surround
her and a cake sits on the table in front of her with eleven candles stuck in
the icing, burning brightly. The image is dark, because all the other lights
are off, but we can see from the cosy yellow glow of the candles that everyone
around the girl is smiling. In fact, they continue to smile as they open their
mouths in unison and begin to sing.
The
image hangs still for a moment, a black spot appearing momentarily in the
middle of it, and then the scene switches again without our permission. It is
like we blink, and suddenly we are looking at another fragment of something we
are still trying to understand.
This
time, we are travelling towards the girl. Her face appears older as we get
closer to it, and her blonde hair now cascades in stretched ringlets down her
back. We can tell that she is close to being a woman by the way her body shape
has changed since we last saw her. She sees us and a scowl crosses her pretty
face; she shouts something we cannot hear and puts up a hand, blocking our view
of her. We can tell that she is annoyed by the glare in her eyes. Immediately,
the image goes black.
But
not for long: now we see stairs, and looking up to the floor above, our girl
appears before us. She looks beautiful in a long silky blue dress that sways
and shines. We see how she has matured as she steps slowly down the stairs
towards us, catching our eye in her deep hazel gaze. The smile on her lips is
embarrassed and pleased; it flits across her face like she has a secret she
doesn’t want us to know. As she turns away, we can no longer see her �" darkness
takes hold once more, speckles of white dotting across our vision until a river
appears in front of us, bright and shining in the autumn sun.
She
is dancing on its bank by some trees with a boy we don’t know. But our girl
seems happy; she laughs, letting her hair fall like liquid gold over her back.
Without warning, the image switches and we know that it is different. The girl
is still dancing, but now she is in an intricate white dress in a large
ballroom. Her hair is up, and the man she is dancing with is not the boy we saw
by the river. Around them, friends and family watch them glide along the floor.
We see the woman who kissed our girl as a baby wipe a tear from her eye. A ring
shines from the forth finger of the girl’s left hand as it rests on the man’s
shoulder.
The
image cuts off, replaced almost immediately by another scene of our girl and
quickly, we adapt. She is noticeably older, her hair hurriedly tied up as she
walks along a pavement, clasping the hand of a young boy who skips beside her.
They meet the man we saw our girl dancing with; he kisses her sweetly, and then
picks up the boy with a grin. The image fades, dissolving into black before abruptly,
our girl is back within our sight. This time she looks angry; we see her walk
across our line of vision, and from a door the man follows. He is shouting. Our
girl whirls around, gesturing wildly and yelling back at him, though we cannot
hear the words �" we notice at a glance that they are in a living room.
The
girl strides back towards the man, passing by a sofa that we notice is leather
and old. They are still screaming at each other, but we are mute to their
cries. That is how the image fades, with our girl and her man still angry at
each other, and for a moment it distresses us as this time, there is a longer
stretch of darkness. We wait impatiently and just when we think our time is
over, an image finally appears.
A
Christmas tree. A family together. There is our girl, smiling over at the man;
he takes her hand �" they both have grey hair now. They watch as the man, who
used to be the boy with our girl’s golden hair, gives a present to a young girl
we assume is his daughter. This means, we realise with sudden clarity, that our
girl has become a grandmother.
The
image slips, and we see our girl wearing black, an umbrella sheltering her from
the grey sky and gloomy drizzle. She is outside with others around her, also
dressed in black. She is crying as she looks down, and we notice that her man
is no longer by her side. There is no time to dwell on this thought as the
image blurs and shakes into a new one; the girl is making a cake with her
grandchildren. They are laughing and she is smiling �" it is only a quick scene.
The
next one seems to last for a long time; all we can see is our girl in a bed.
Her face is lined with old age, her golden hair changed to a snowy white halo
about her wrinkled face. She looks like she is sleeping, with her light smile
we know so well playing about her lips. This moment hovers and we watch her
sigh, and then she breathes no more. We are plunged into darkness; from behind
us we hear a whirring sound and a steady tapping follows it. The film reel has
finished, and it spins around and around in its projector.
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