The intriguingly titled Apple Cider Vinegar appears on the surface to want to dwell on ecological matters. In the end turns out to be a gently playful essay film that flits between the UK, Palestine, the US and the island of Fogo, using a small kidney stone as the unusual prompt for a narrative that reflects on the often imperceptible connections between life and nature.
It can sometimes feel off when a documentary lists the director also as screenwriter, but in this case it is more than apt. Where fact and fiction overlap is never overly clear in Sofie Benoot’s watchable and often freewheeling film, but she always manages to hold the attention, often with the aid of a voice-over by acclaimed actress Siân Phillips, who also plays a character central to the film’s journey.
Phillips’ character is a person who (like David Attenborough) made her name narrating nature documentaries (which had “titles with ‘Planet’ and ‘Earth’ in them” she says) that showed in English households every Sunday evening for decades, but who now still enjoys watching webcam footage of animals in their natural habitat. She is known for her “husky voice,” but after some early nature footage of an elephant at a waterhole and a spider crawling across a camera lens, she shows in her hand a kidney stone (which looks “like an old bit of chewing gum”) which Benoot decides to use as a catalyst for musings on the natural world.
The world of flora and fauna subtly take a back seat as the film shifts direction, driven by the revelation that the kidney stone happens to have actual Antarctic stone within it. Thereafter, from the lava fields of Fogo where Glaubert Libriano paints volcanoes, through to roadsides in the UK where geologist Thomas Blenkinsop enthusiastically examines pebbles while his mildly engaged daughters Ruth and Nancy try to show they are interested, the film tells a series of stories about the little-explored world of stones.
Included along the narrative journey are forensic expert Lorna Dawson, Palestinian stone-cutter Mohammad Bsharat and artist Rob Arnold (who crafts work made up from rock-like detritus from the beach that are actually compressed plastics), all of whom help link stone to stories of our past but also explain its connections to living beings.
Things often spin back to that kidney stone – and the stories the stone holds within it – as filmmaker Benoot dwells on the things that bind us together despite the impact of climate change. At one point the narrator comments: “Traces of nuclear tests at sea show up in ear-stones of fish…we are permeable – things pass through us and sometimes they settle and become sediment.”
Apple Cider Vinegar (so titled because drinking such liquids helps deal with kidney stone complaints) is a playful film that is given an added sense of soul and gravitas by Siân Phillips’s melodious voice. Its episodic nature offers up a series of gentle surprises and thoughtful moments as it both celebrates the beauty of the planet while also adding in subtle warnings about dangers to the environment. It is a unique and almost unquantifiable film, but also an engaging and intriguing one.
Belgium-Netherlands, 2024, 80mins
Dir/scr: Sofie Benoot
Production: Inti Films, Pieter van Huystee Film
International sales: Filmotor
Producer: Peter Krüger
Cinematography: Jonathan Wannyn
Editors: Sofie Benoot, Liyo Gong
Music: Guillaume Graux
With: Siân Phillips, Lorna Dawson, Thomas Blenkinsop, Pete Harrison, Rob Arnold, Glaubert Libriano, Mohammad Bsharat
