Metamorfosia (Director's Comments + Review) 2014 Film by Cosmotropia de Xam

This is a review of Metamorfosia — a 2014 art film by Cosmotropia de Xam co-authored by Carmen Incarnadine and starring her.

This article includes the director’s comments on the movie and making of it.

Like other works of the director, the movie has a heavily psychedelic atmosphere and deals with the supernatural and other kinds of mystery.

This is one of my favourite films by Cosmotropia de Xam. Read on to learn why.

 

Synopsis

A young lady (Carmen Incarnadine) is going through a stressful loss — her husband (Martin N) has been missing for three days. She starts getting items in the mail from an anonymous sender. The items seem to shed some light on what happened to her beloved.

One of them is a bag of a mysterious substance — E769. The contact with it launches the girl’s irreversible mysterious metamorphosis accompanied by indescribable sensations and supernatural events.

Who is she going to become after her transformation? What are the nature and origin of this drug? Who is the mysterious sender? What happened to the husband and will the poor wife ever see him again? Watch the film to get the answers to all these questions.

Summary

Plot

The film takes off slowly. The opening titles and the first few scenes may feel a bit too long, repetitive, and lacking action. But then the film becomes much more dynamic.

 

The story got me intrigued from the start, and my curiosity was successfully maintained throughout the whole duration of the film.
 

The ending is interesting and unobvious. It answers the questions about the nature of the girl’s metamorphosis and other details, leaving the viewer’s curiosity satisfied.

The story borrows one of the main details from Diabolique, a 2013 film by Cosmotropia de Xam — the mysterious drug used by vampires to control humans. However, this time the drug is different — E769 — and its nature is explained in detail making it less mysterious than Esmakra from Diabolique (but not at all less interesting).

The whole plot is more elaborate than the one of Diabolique, and the film is more dynamic in general.

The story of the E769 drug continues (although is a less obvious way) in the 2023 film by Cosmotropia de Xam — Space Necronomicon. Cosmotropia de Xam says:

Space Necronomicon and Metamorfosia both have their own story but if you relate them to another, the universe extends.

I like Cosmotropia de Xam’s unique take on the image of vampires. Unlike the traditional demonic creatures relying solely on magical forces of evil and their fangs, they use technology — drugs to control humans. Sucking blood is also carried out via a special technological process involving drop counter tubes (this can also be seen in Phantasmagoria 2, a 2018 film by Cosmotropia de Xam).

Shazzula and Martin N

Throughout Metamorfosia, the insect theme is highly present, notably the life cycle of flies and butterflies. This makes a beautiful metaphor for what the main character is going through.

Visual Style

The film is made in black and white, but some of the scenes have monochrome colourful filters applied to them. Overall, the picture is very beautiful — clear and contrasting.

There are many highly artistic shots. My favourite one is Carmen’s character beginning her metamorphosis while being enclosed in a rectangular cell (a metaphor for a cocoon) full of light and moving in slow motion. During this scene, the narrator (Ushersan) is explaining the process of a metamorphosis of a butterfly. This beautiful metaphor adds to the mysterious vibe. This is the scene during which I felt that I was starting to love the film.

The movie significantly relies on the graceful beauty of fragile and slender Carmen Incarnadine. I especially find her cute at the beginning — with blond hair. As the plot develops, Carmen’s performance gradually becomes more erotic.

I love the way Carmen portrays the descent into madness. Her body movements and facial expressions, in combination with visual post production effects, create a stunning and hypnotizing image of the girl’s nervous system malfunctioning under the disintegrating influence of the drug.

Music

The score mostly consists of soft and soothing drone soundscapes. Only in a few scenes, meant to feel more intense, it’s based on heavy distorted synthesizers. Overall, the score is different from some other films by Cosmotropia de Xam that aim for higher sound density (such as the aforementioned Diabolique, The House that Eats the Rabbit (2021 film), or The Inferno Index (2021 film)). In Metamorfosia, the influence of witch house music is not as obvious as in Cosmotropia de Xam’s other movies.

Cosmotropia de Xam himself isn’t credited as one of the composers, which is unusual for his films.

A composition playing during the end titles, and another one sounding within the film, was performed by In Death It Ends who had also composed the theme for Diabolique.

Other participating composers include Shazzula (also making a short appearance in the film) and Helena Markos.

Director’s Comments

To provide you with first-hand information, I asked Cosmotropia de Xam himself a number of questions about his film:

How were the idea and story of the film born?

The idea had its spring around the Diabolique era. I thought I could experiment with some loose narration — Carmen Incarnadine and I had done two film collabs before (Inside the Clock of the White Rabbit and Ekstasia) — I showed her Diabolique and Malacreanza and asked if she was ready for a new project — we had that Bergman-ish slowcore but sci-fi mood in mind (we started the filming with watching Under the Skin at a cinema where she was working) and the strong black and white shadow look inspired by the experimental films of Frans Zwartjes.

We filmed it isolated: Carmen‘s scenes in London, the kids and Martin N (of Diabolique) in Cologne, and Shazzula‘s part in Brussels. So the photo of Martin N was a necessary key element for the improvised story based on just ideas. The other ideas came on set together with Carmen‘s creative mind during brainstorming.

Larissa and Janet Littwin

Were any symbolic locations used in this film?

I did a lot of research on interesting architecture of fear. I came across some epic brutalism buildings and a brutalism estate in London and the famous underpass where Stanley Kubrick filmed the opening scene of A Clockwork Orange.

Some more interesting architecture was found later in the Netherlands: some weird houses that look like UFOs.

Does the name E769 symbolize anything particular or is it a random set of digits? 

E769 was named for what it is. At one point it was even the film title.

Why did you decide to invent a new drug instead of just continuing and developing the story of Esmakra from Diabolique?

Black just worked better with the harsh contrast black and white look, and the effect on the body should be different than Esmakra.

There is another film about a young girl gradually going crazy — Repulsion by Roman Polanski. It’s also in black and white and the main character is a young blond girl. Is Metamorfosia an homage to it?

Yes, Metamorfosia as well as Fantasia 2 are somehow a tribute to the hyper atmospheric Repulsion which was also filmed in London — as far as I remember, we crossed filming locations. And the estate scene has quite a similar atmosphere.

There are two annoying types of dreams — where you can’t open your eyes and see properly and where you can barely move your legs trying to walk. The scene closer to the beginning, where Carmen’s character is chasing her husband at a parking garage, reminds me of them. Was this intentional?

Yes intentional and both are different garages and in different countries which makes it even more nightmarish.

In films, I often see women who cry but without tears, which looks so fake and annoying. In Metamorfosia, I was pleased to see Carmen crying realistically — with tears. Did she cry for real or did you drop water into her eyes?

It was an experiment for Carmen… she tried to think about something sad and started to cry — it worked and she was proud of it.

The subway scene is obviously an homage to Isabelle Adjani’s famous scene in Possession. Were there any other references and homages to films, music, books..?

Frans Zwartjes, Kafka, Bergman, Repulsion, A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick, Lynch, Lost Highway, Jean Rollin's films (the French speaking part about vampires), 60’s avantgarde and mondo films were some of the references.

Where to Watch Metamorfosia

• Stream online at Phantasma TV
• Purchase a physical copy at Phantasma Disques online store

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