Anna Odell, The Reunion, 2013. All rights reserved.The Reunion, a film by Swedish conceptual artist Anna Odell, is an original take on the well-worn ‘victim gets revenge on bully’ story. Though the film becomes slightly mired in its own narrative quirks and often tests our patience of its subject, it is nonetheless a thoughtful and unique look at the uncomfortable subject of bullying and its consequences for all involved.
The film is split into two unequal parts. The first concerns a 20-year reunion of Anna’s old high school class. Anna – now a controversial artist best known for faking a suicide attempt and enduring a stint in a Stockholm psychiatric hospital as a piece of 'performance art' – attends and uses the occasion to accuse her former classmates of tormenting her at school and making her childhood miserable. Needless to say, her classmates who were aloof to her presence at the reunion to begin with, react with bemusement, then defensiveness, and finally outright hostility.
The second part of the film tells us that this whole event was imagined. Anna was never invited to her high school reunion, and only found out about it after it had happened. Clearly still reeling from her high school experiences, she made this (short) film to imagine what it would be like if she had been there – “what were they all trying to avoid?”
