(These are the key points of Thomas Elsaesser's introduction to the film in October 2018 at Gdansk University and then at the Essay Film Presentation at the cult bookshop in Amsterdam on 2 December 2018, <https://perdu.nl/ nl/r/a-day-on-the-essay-film-visual-erosions-sprouting-words/>)

• 1. The opening magnificently builds up the blend of a contemplative-reflectiveretrospective mood (Primrose in the boat), and a state of abjection and imprisonment (the somnolent and comatose Temeraire, staring straight at us from behind bars): this foreshadowing the tense psychological encounter between these two characters, clearly heading for a confrontation.

• 2. This human drama is set off against a serene, breathtakingly beautiful, but mercilessly indifferent natural landscape – a perspective to which the film returns at important moments: it gives us both relief from the tense drama, and it gives us the sense of a larger frame of reference, within which the heart-breaking tragedy of the woman and the abject state of the man are an insignificant blip.

• 3. In fact, the landscape translates into visual metaphor the enigma of Primrose’s repeated phrase: ‘I’m not your darling’. Nature, too, is not your darling: so that Primrose's gesture of forgiveness, grace and mercy (if that is what it is) is not the response of a weak woman, giving in, because she is needy for human contact and male companionship at whatever cost, and instead, it is the result of her agency as woman who is also a ‘force of nature’.

• 4. Charmaine delivers an extraordinary performance throughout. She really brings to life the meaning of this character and conveys the complexity of her actions: its ethical as well as political project. Endlessly watchable, she carries the film. Better even than she was in Suitcase.

• 5. Charmaine's spellbinding presence throws into sharp relief the fact that Eddie has failed to flesh out or develop his character. He is disappointing, especially if one knows his extraordinary performance in Escape, and his equally riveting play in Suitcase. This is a drunken, senile loser, unimaginable that he might once have consorted with the white elite, or that he had the women at his little finger. Once he is tied to the chair he does a better job, but that's not too hard.