Lisa, Stephanie, and Natalie are
three teenaged girls left alone in Lisa’s parents’ house. As they indulge in whatever games suit their
fancy, Stephanie relates a story about her dad’s experience in the Algerian
War. Afterwards, a phantom soldier
continuously visits the three, menacing and raping them.
Pierre B Reinhard’s Tracking (aka Ghost Soldier) is a difficult film, not so much because of its
subject matter but because of the way it treats it. The movie, by and large, is about the
aftermath of rape, the PTSD suffered by its victims, and the arbitrariness of
victimhood. Each of the girls is
attacked at least once, though Lisa seems to get more attention than the other
two. These attacks happen randomly and
suddenly. The Soldier is usually
represented via POV handheld camera, and it’s interesting that the faces of all
the male characters are never shown clearly.
This ghost is something called forth from the spinning of a tale, which
recounts itself in the first present-time attack scene. Stephanie’s dad used to tell her this story,
about how he had sex with a peasant girl in Algeria for a bottle of
champagne. That night, Lisa is assaulted
and violated with a champagne bottle. Importantly,
this scene plays out at first as if it were a flashback with the protagonists
playing the roles of the peasants. It
boggles the mind that Stephanie’s father would not only relate this story to
his daughter (though not his wife) but also tell her how it’s the best memory
he had from his time in the military.
The
presentation of this sequence, however, and of the girls themselves, is pure
prurience. Natalie is threatened with a
straight razor while in the bathroom. When
Natalie is attacked the first time, she is backed into a shower, which is turned
on. The Soldier then slices her clothes
off, and the camera gawps at her exposed breasts and sopping wet lingerie. When the girls are initially introduced, Lisa
is focused on, prancing around in her underwear. When the three play dress up, Reinhard focuses
intensely on their naked bodies as they get changed. It raises an intriguing question: Do these
girls deserve what happens to them (by dint of the fact that the film is so
obsessed with their physical attributes, which they show off freely), and if
not, how does the viewer’s enjoyment of the attacks (they are, after all, shot
from the audience’s perspective) reflect on their own attitudes toward the
subject? Reinhard does not separate the
horror of the act from the exploitation of it.
On the one hand, it’s serious about the situation, on the other, it’s
serious about turning the viewer on with its kinks.
Another aspect of the film is the
maturation of these girls into adulthood or, at the absolute minimum, the
desire to do so. All of their parents
are absent. Lisa’s aunt (?) Christina
appears periodically to chastise the girls, plug the telephone back in, and
remind them to take birth control. Yet,
Christina is ineffectual in her “guidance,” partly because she’s far too casual
about allowing the girls free rein and partly because the girls resent her
presence as an authority figure. The
girls, like teenagers everywhere, know everything there is to know about
everything, so they don’t need to pay attention to some “old” person who may
have been where they are. In fact, the
girls hate Christina so much, they actually try to murder her with a
rifle. As Christina drives up to the
house, she is tracked through a set of crosshairs. As she drives away, Lisa finally takes a
shot, blowing out Christina’s car tire.
The teens then lament not being able to kill her on the open road,
because some passerby stopped to assist with her car. The girls play house, having dinner and
booze, and they begin to roleplay in an adult (not in the porn sense) fantasy. Lisa becomes the wife, Stephanie the husband,
and Natalie the husband’s mistress. As
the film winds on, the protagonists go so far as to dress their parts in an
effort to protect themselves.
Nevertheless, the façade is not enough to deter the attacks. The maturity the girls attempt to emulate is,
more or less, like a beacon for the Soldier, their introduction into
“adulthood” a trauma. It carries an air
of “be careful what you wish for” while also bearing a certain statement on the
callous treatment of women by men (the reason we never see men’s faces is
because they are every man, everywhere).
“Sex is life,” the message left on a mirror by the Soldier, is both
honest and ominous.
How the girls deal with their
ordeal is also key to the film’s theme.
Both Lisa and Natalie have flashbacks to their assaults when they come
in contact with the objects with which they were attacked (a bottle and a
straight razor, respectively). The two
have meltdowns, and Lisa even tries to run off into the woods at one point. Stephanie appears to be (on the surface, at least),
the strongest of the three. She tries to
be the masculine defender of her “family.”
She is the one who carries the rifle.
She searches the grounds for the Soldier in an endeavor to confront him,
become the hunter not the prey. She is
comforting to Lisa and Natalie, and she continues to put up a brave front when
it becomes plain that she will have her turn.
Rather than resist, she offers her body to the ghost, attempts to
bargain her sexuality for the removal of the violence which accompanies his
attacks. She figures it would still be
unwanted sex (read: rape), but perhaps it can be made less harrowing. Even she breaks down, however, when her time
comes. She lashes out, shooting the
rifle randomly, an impotent venting of rage against something ineffable and
unerasable. The film becomes muddled
because it throws cause and effect out the window, but this is also a large
portion of its point. To make it all
black and white robs it of any impact it may have. But still, the grey that the film immerses
itself in is just as problematic due to the overt sexualization of its
leads. Ultimately, the girls carry their
damage onward, and there is an exorcism of a sort, though its efficacy is in
serious doubt. After all, how do you
destroy something so primal in the hearts of men?
MVT: For as scattershot as
it makes itself, Reinhard’s approach to the story is admirable in its daring,
if not in effectiveness.
Make or Break: The moment
you realize you’re not watching a flashback, and you’re not watching a
traditional ghost story.
Score: 6.5/10
