Return Trip

Seventeen years ago, director Carol Morley travelled to India with her friend, Catherine Corcoran. After a few weeks, Corcoran had an accident: in the dark of night, she fell into a pit several metres deep. She sustained severe injuries and lost consciousness. Even though Corcoran quickly convalesced, the consequences of the mishap are still tangible to the people involved. Morley reconstructs the events by going back to the places in India she visited with Corcoran. She films them in a stream of images, a kind of stream-of-consciousness of the memory, with energetic, fragmentary and often blurred close-up shots, edited in a rapid tempo, with fast music and a reflective voice-over. This forms a contrast with the interviews, which are calm and have no music. Morley speaks with Corcoran, who no longer wanted to see her after the incident. On the one hand, Corcoran is laconic about it – she was unconscious and doesn’t remember anything – but at the same time she admits that she is still trying to cope with the consequences of the accident. Furthermore, Morley interviews both their mothers and the man who came to the rescue at the time, thereby saving Corcoran’s life. The interviewees sit right opposite the camera, so they directly confront Morley, her feelings of guilt and her memory.