The pages and perhaps also the past are alive in “Chronovisor,” the enchanting debut feature from the directors Kevin Walker and Jack Auen. Collectively known as Cosmic Salon, the filmmaking duo have crafted a low-budget mystery that unfolds predominantly through images of texts. That doesn’t make it any less beguiling.
The film centers on Béatrice Courte (Anne Laure Sellier), a philosophy professor in New York City who, spending her nights holed up in library carrels, happens upon the story of Pellegrino Ernetti, a real-life priest from Italy who claimed to have invented a machine that could return to and record the past.
We learn of this world-altering discovery almost exclusively through the words from various texts Béatrice reads, the film’s English translations glowing from the pages like spectral letters. Bathed in a fuzzy amber glow, these late nights in libraries lead to a bewitchingly lo-fi thriller that itself looks like a strange relic dug up from decades past.
The construction here operates at its own frequency, and builds to an eerie climax that extends beyond the books. When it gets there, it becomes a unique little marvel: One whose initial momentum is in enlivening the most basic of images — words on a page — only to lead Béatrice to a visual world that feels entirely, mesmerizingly, all its own.
Chronovisor Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters.
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