Martha, the stuff of legends, seen through the eyes of Stéphanie, her daughter and accomplice. The little girl who followed her around on tour, falling asleep under the piano, is now a 34-year-old behind the camera. Her mother is still traveling the globe from concert to concert. Waking up, eating, playing piano, she lets us into her world. The current of truth weaving between the scenes, as between the lines, is that every child of a renowned artist has to work to find a place in their parent’s esteem and in their life. With a disarming frankness and profound tenderness, the filmmaker traces a surprising and extraordinary portrait of the talented and inspired woman who bore her. Threaded through with Martha’s music, the film’s score accompanies the viewer in an ungilded dive into the life of an exceptionally gifted artist. An absent mother, loving in her own way, who thinks out loud in her Argentine accent about the mysteries of this life that chose her. Searching for her words. Hesitating. Questioning. A mother, distant yet so close at hand, who confesses her unattainable love for Chopin to her daughter. In this cinéma vérité, she lays bare the anxiety that clutches her before each concert.

The film becomes even more astonishing when the eponymous bloody daughter, the youngest of Martha’s three daughters and her favourite, cuts scenes from her home movies into the film. We enter the family home in the 1980s, its doors open, as music lovers, friends and security guards roam the halls. Martha’s daughters appear in these grainy images to share their vision of the transmission, creation and hidden aspects of this strong-willed woman. The film resounds with a love for life: at times just a murmur, at others a roar. They travel together to Martha’s native Argentina, but the things her daughter seeks can’t be found in its cities or its streets. Her mother’s allegiance belongs to music and the hectic life of a soloist, nothing else. This is her mother, and Stéphanie loves her as she is. In this life outside of life, outside of time, outside of everything: the life of a “goddess” who seems to float above the rest of the world, larger than life, fragile but invincible. This is a story with an exceptional impact.

Jennifer Alleyn
Filmmaker