In legend, the director has always adopted the role of the all-powerful potentate. The greater his genius, the less inhibited his autocratic regime over the actors on the set. Perhaps it is repressed envy that leads the average citizen to conceive film direction as a licence to sadism.
Jannicke Låker does not harbour such prejudice, but she uses direction as a form of power, nonetheless. She develops experimental psychological set-ups from the relations of power involved in film recording and arranges simple situations from the screenplay and other guidelines like an experiment whose test persons are the actors. In the process, Låker ruthlessly shows things that the viewers would often prefer not to see: taxing, humiliating or painful situations and the test persons’ attempts to defend themselves. Playing with perspectives, Låker simultaneously turns the viewer into a voyeur.
