Reborn Twice: The Haunting Humanity of Womb
Few films linger in memory the way Womb (2010) does — not because of the loud or shocking, but, rather, because it whispers questions that echo long after the credits fade. Directed by Hungarian filmmaker Benedek Fliegauf, this quiet, provocative drama balances the thin line of love story and moral science fiction. It ventures into the deeply intertwined realms of affection, obsession, and creation. Cloning, in all of its clinical detachment, fails to capture the deeply human elements of Womb: creation, grief, and the desire to hold on, all intertwined.
As complex as its story is, the soul of Womb is most deeply anchored to its cast: Eva Green and Matt Smith. Each of these artists committed their own vulnerabilities to characters that straddled the impossible balance of love and ethics. The emotional weight of the story was just as pronounced in the film’s making, and for those that were too emotionally charged, the story was no joy to tell.
Love that Transcends Time and Nature
Rebecca (Eva Green) is rudely welcomed back to the desolate English coastline village that is wrapped in the winds of silence. She celebrates the rekindling of the everlasting bond with her first love, Thomas (Matt Smith). Their happiness is rudely interrupted when Thomas dies in an accident.
Unable to bear the pain of loss, Rebecca makes a shocking and disturbing choice – she decides to clone him. The child of her body is also the genetic reincarnation of the man she loved. She raises him as her son, and as the boy matures, a painful transformation in her love forces them both to the replaced the ghost of her love with the maternal love that is painful.
Almost everything is kept minimal in the direction of Fliegauf. The long silences, muted colors, and the barren landscapes that reflect Rebecca’s isolation are all perfectly matched to the minimalism of time. The emotions are in the absence of dialogue. The humans are not villains, and the emotions are not explained; the anger, loss and pain attempt to explain themselves.
Eva Green: Carrying a Character’s Loneliness into Real Life
Eva Green first turned heads in The Dreamers and later in Casino Royale. Yet in preparing for the role in Rebecca, she approached the character “a woman trapped in the gravity of her own love” with the sort of intensity that blurred the lines between the actor and the role.
Green devoted days of pre-production to complete her emotional preparation. A full isolation from the cast and crew provided her the solitude that Rebecca experiences. The emotional weight of her performance came from a haunting emotional exhaustion that Green was able to take with her from the character. “It’s the role that has messed with my head the most,” was her own testimony of Rebecca. “She is grieving for someone who never really dies. That love is sick and sacred,” she remarked in an interview.
Away from the camera, Green’s emotional preparation was most closely directed by Fliegauf. The director’s voice was reported as commanding her to complete full takes while keeping silence, focusing solely on breath and the minute movements that he felt spoke. “I want to see the soul and I want the camera to see the soul and the eyes,” he expressed, a demand to which Green responded.
Matt Smith Before the Spotlight
At the time Womb was filmed, Matt Smith was still an up-and-coming actor and about to become the Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who. Womb was one of the last performances Smith would give before he became a household name.
Smith’s Thomas has an unusual duality in character. He portrays a tender lover, and then a confused young man grappling with the complexities of his own identity. He is at once the same and different. To prepare for the role of the cloned version of his character, Smith, in collaboration with Fliegauf, was encouraged to mentally impoverish his character, Thomas, stripping away the earlier dominant role of confidence and replacing it with an aura of uncertainty and discomfort.
In numerous interviews Smith stated that the film “haunted him for months”. He discussed the film’s ethical implications of love, playing god, and being born into someone else’s story. His subtle unease became one of the most powerful tools of the film.
Smith and Green exhibited a unique rhythm during filming. They often refrained from group rehearsals prior to emotionally intense scenes, expecting that the unscripted passages would contribute to authenticity. Other cast members and film staff remember the two actors, after an emotionally demanding scene, sitting silently and gazing out to the sea, too fatigued to process their experience.
Behind the Camera: A Film That Fought Against Silence
Womb was primarily shot on location along the North Sea coast. Aesthetic challenges arose during filming due to rapidly changing, unpredictable weather that included cold winds and torrential rains. Fliegauf preferred to use natural light, a philosophy that further restricted the filming windows to only a few hours a day, depending on the conditions of the sky and weather.
Cinematographer Peter Szatmári referred to the experience as “painting with grey” due to the grey, overcast skies. The conditions, while indeed a challenge, emotionally enhanced the film. The grey, muted color palette of the film reflected, both visually and emotionally, the isolation of Rebecca and the morally ambiguous choices that defined her.
The crew operated within significant limitations. They had to contend with a shoestring budget as well as tightly coordinated shooting phases, leading them to capture lengthy, unbroken scenes to maintain unadulterated realism. Fliegauf was open to improvisation to the extent of shifting a scene’s intended emotional register as the cameras were rolling. A well-known story about the beach scene illustrates this. During that scene, Rebecca wades into the sea with the child version of Thomas, a moment that was not scripted. Green proposed the idea during the shoot as a form of purification. It was instantly embraced by the director, resulting in one of the most stunning scenes in the film.
Public Interest and the Disquieting Buzz
When Womb was screened at the Locarno Film Festival in 2010, it was polarizing, not because it was a spectacle, but because it was unsettling. The idea of a woman giving birth to a clone of her lover was too controversial for most of the target audience, but art film enthusiasts were intrigued. Many were anticipating a sci-fi film akin to Gattaca or Never Let Me Go, but the film was a meditative art-house piece on the emotional implications of grief.
Responses to the piece were mixed; while some applauded its boldness and poetic elements, others dismissed it as chilling and unsettling. Critics, however, recognized its indelible impact, regardless of their acceptance of the film. The discourse centered on Eva Green, whose portrayal evoked tremendous admiration and strong debate on online platforms. Questions about Rebecca’s love being selfless or selfish were debated, as well as the film’s stance on Rebecca.
Although Womb did not do well commercially, it appealed, particularly to followers of thoughtful European films. The pacing and emotional restraint of the film were appreciated by viewers who sought psychological depth over unexpected plot twists.
The Emotional Experiment No One Could Escape
The essence of Womb’s being lies not within the realm of sci-fi but rather within the human truth of the longing for the inalienable. It also poses the same questions as in real life: how far for love… and for how much of yourself will it cost?
Minimalism, as Fliegauf explains, is intended. “I wanted the silence to speak, because grief rarely shouts.”
Eva Green “took the longest break” because the movie deeply impacted her, while for Matt Smith it served as as “ the bridge” between the contained personal feel of the indie film and the global exposure of the ‘Doctor Who’ franchise.
In hindsight, many of the film’s followers prefer to see more than a love story. They see the two actors starkly juxtaposed at a crossroads – one overshadowed by the dichotomy of fame, the other riddled with the battle of fear. They also see, and perhaps overwhelmingly so, the director in the film not as a traditional entertainer, but as one who with silence shifted the hearts of many. It served as a quiet documentary of devastation.
Perhaps this is the reason Womb endures: it is not concerned with cloning at all. It is about the pain, beauty, and stubbornness of love — a feeling that is so real, and so entrenched, that not even science can make it clean.
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