The Girl and the Spider

Henriette Confurius as Mara in The Girl and the Spider

Ramon and Silvan Zurcher's The Girl and the Spider is a worthy follow up to The Strange Little Cat. Lisa, a twenty something resident of Bern, is leaving the apartment she shares with Mara to move into another flat with her boyfriend, Markus. The film chronicles the moving out and in process, plus a wingding put on to celebrate the move. The film features over a dozen characters, some denizens of the two apartment complexes, as they cross paths, often literally, with Mara and Lisa.

The film also focuses, like the Zurcher brother's first film, on the animals that share these lofts with the humans. A parallel is drawn between the two. The human characters, like the so-called lesser beasts, mark their territory and leave their imprint. This is especially true of Mara who is obviously none too happy with Lisa's departure and acts out her resentment in various petty, passive aggressive ways. The film is full of micro aggressions and fleeting flirtations by all the characters, man or beast. As in The Strange Little Cat, the Zurcher's present the space of the film as a field of conflict in which the various members of the animal kingdom, ever watchful of each other, vie for dominion.