A Second Encounter as an Inner Explosion
By Carwan Dourandich Originally published in Etemaad Newspaper, Issue 5520
At first glance, Coma presents itself as a gift from the COVID-19 pandemic. The film opens with on-screen text from director Bertrand Bonello, confirming this premise while also referencing Nocturama (2016), his previous work, which shares thematic connections with Coma, particularly regarding the concept of rebirth. Similarly, the closing moments of the film feature text reflecting on transitioning through an in-between state - between life and death, between day and night - culminating in a message of "hope, even in the darkest nights," accompanied by haunting images of environmental destruction.
Patricia Coma, the film's central figure, acts as a guide for a teenage girl whose name remains undisclosed - a deliberate omission that signifies its irrelevance. She could be anyone: you, me, or anyone else, given that we all experienced the same isolation during the pandemic. Patricia Coma is a novice influencer but an expert in manipulation, at least when it comes to the teenage girl. Symbolically, Patricia Coma represents the "Big Other" for the girl. Through implicit messaging, she instructs her to sit, lie down, cry, play, deceive herself, and daydream. She promotes a device on her channel called The Revealer, which, according to her, hypnotizes and captivates its user - where losing is considered winning. The game allegedly enhances memory and compels the player to persist. The teenage girl, deeply influenced, purchases the device and, terrifyingly, never loses - even with her eyes closed.
Gaming as a medium allows for both failure and the opportunity to correct mistakes. Yet, The Revealer is designed in such a way that the player never makes an error, resisting both death and endings. Patricia Coma warns her audience that The Revealer is addictive. Could its addictiveness stem from the postmodern human's desire to explore and experience a life without the inevitability of death?
Early in the film, the teenage girl visits YouTube and plays one of Patricia Coma's videos. Looking directly at the camera, Patricia declares, "A better life means a longer life, and a longer life means a better chance at understanding things." She seems to be suggesting that, if one desires a better life, waking up is unnecessary - since a longer life is only possible within a dream. The more one remains in dreams, the deeper their connection to their unconscious and repressed desires. From this moment onward, the girl plunges into fantasy, as the real world has become unbearable due to the prolonged lockdown. To endure it, she must escape into illusion.
She arranges her dolls into a set piece, and suddenly, an ominous warning appears in the form of a disembodied male mouth (possibly Gilles Deleuze?), cautioning, "The dreams of others are extremely dangerous. Dreams have an immense desire for power... Never get caught in someone else's dream." Yet, even the dream world can become unbearable. In an early scene, the girl types an email to an unknown recipient: "In my dreams, I hold you..." She abruptly deletes the message before completing it, as if resisting a return to illusion. To imagine embracing someone lost (a brother? A father? A lover?) is to relive trauma. And the re-experience of trauma is so painful that she prefers the real world, however harsh, over the dream world.
From a Lacanian perspective, dreams can be so traumatic and intolerable that we wake up - because reality, despite its hardships, is easier to endure. Put simply, no one wants to relive a tragic event twice.
The dolls in Coma function as the shadows of the film's characters, serving as proxies for hidden emotions. They express deep-seated reactions such as crying, laughter, rage, sadness, and even sexual desire - allowing the teenage girl to experience them vicariously. One striking scene involves Scott and Ashley, a brother-sister duo, engaging in sexual intercourse after a curfew alarm sounds during the lockdown. Ashley, overwhelmed by frustration, vents about her deteriorating mental state before the two siblings turn to each other for solace.
As mentioned earlier, both reality (the lockdown) and illusion (dreams) have become unbearable. With no escape in sight, they resort to a temporary solution: action. In this context, action is akin to purgatory - a liminal space between realities. Ashley and Scott's sexual encounter emerges not from conventional desire but as a desperate act of rebellion against their confined existence.
Slavoj Zizek once stated, "We have sex to escape the overwhelming force of a dream that would otherwise crush us."
Coma marked my first encounter with Bertrand Bonello's work. To be honest, my reason for choosing this film was not its FIPRESCI prize at the Berlinale, but rather its short runtime. Even so, it tests the patience of today's audiences, leaving many feeling drained and disheartened.
Despite this, Coma forces us to confront the trauma of the pandemic. Every viewer has lived through this collective trauma, and the film seeks to revive those memories. By immersing the audience once more in the distressing imagery of solitude, depression, and loss - elements that continue to fuel our present anxieties - it offers a controlled environment within the cinema to neutralize the destructive power of these images. In doing so, Coma strips these haunting memories of their oppressive grip, allowing us to reclaim them.
As Bonello himself declares at the beginning of his film, Coma is ultimately about "rebirth."
