point of contact

DOSSIER 2006
The official online publication of the
Syracuse International Film Festival, Vol.3
A Point of Contact Production

No Place (1 & 2), U.K.
Sarah Miles, Director

Film Review by E. Zajec

The title of writer/director Sarah Miles' film No Place, plays off the famous last phrase that Dorothy utters in the legendary film The Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home". This however, is only the first pair of mirror images that we encounter in the film. The film itself is divided into two parallel and complementary parts that can be shown together or separately, and has initially been shown in two separate but related locations, King's Lynn and King's Cross which stand at either end of the railway line in and out of London. The first part No Place: Looking Forward, set in King's Lynn, amongst the rural isolation of the surrounding fenlands, stands as the archetypal representation of the country, and plays off the vicissitudes and the point of view of a young girl watching The Wizard of Oz in a local movie theater, against the backdrop of the film itself with its reminders of the flatlands of Kansas and Dorothy's childhood dreams. In parallel, the second part No Place: Looking Back, is set in London the archetypal representation of the city, and plays off the same vicissitudes, but this time, from the point of view of a woman, a grown up Dorothy, that looks back on the countryside and her childhood illusions from the bustle and encroaching anonymity of an urban metropolis with a sense of lost innocence. Through a series of elusive juxtapositions of real and fictional characters and images from both locations, almost a hundred years after Oz, Miles seems to be telling us with her film that, right now, no place feels like home.