The Ants
When Jean was out getting wood in the beginning, it showed him upturning the wood chip, and observing thousands of ants scurrying beneath.
He just stared at it for several seconds.
What was the significance of this?
As someone who was depressed he might look at the ants as a metaphor for human existance and think how meaningless life is.
share[deleted]
Great interpretation of the ants. thank you!
Also why do you think the movie is titled "under the sand"? Similar to ants, sand is minuscule and insignificant when taken one by one. Also her grieving was in part for her lost husband but also for her lost youth. Something she tries to keep by going to the gym constantly. She can be dilusional, depressed, whatever, but she would not skip a workout.
For me the sand, or ashes in the catholic sense, can represent that insignificant material to which our body will return to.
Sous le sable or under the sand literally is where she buries her emotion, not to let it see light of day. She creates a perfect denial and remains as simply as an ostrich with the her head in the sand.
It certainly is metaphorical but (spoiler) late in the film as she returns to the beach she symbolically digs or probes for answers to perhaps other lost aspects of her life. She is herself in the film, but she is all of us as well, all who drive the intolerable or infinitely painful far away from our consciousness.
One of the great aspects of the French Cinema which makes it so superior to any other is the open interpretation of so many aspects although Francois Ozon in this film, perhaps a bit young and new to the cinema in this particular film explains a bit more fully than most French Directors do, nonetheless this is a heartbreakingly moving and wholly superior bit of film making.
Ozon is a rare genius.