myDylarama

Q&A with Sofia Alaoui, dir. Qu'importe si les bêtes meurent [So What if the Goats Die] - Clermont 2020

Abla Kandalaft — 2020-02-14T16:00:51Z

In the heights of the Atlas mountains, Abdellah, a young shepherd, and his father are snowed in. As their animals start to starve, Abdellah goes in search of supplies in a village more than a day's walk away. With his mule, he arrives in the village and discovers that it has been deserted because of a curious event that has left all the believers baffled.

The product of a truly incredible mix of genres, this short is a mesmerising oddity shot amongst the stunning, other-worldly landscape of the Atlas mountains in what were apparently fairly difficult conditions. Kudos to Sofia Alaoui for pulling it off and giving us well-crafted short that leaves us wanting more.

Trailer

Qu'importe si les bêtes meurent / Extrait / VOSTEN from Sofia Alaoui on Vimeo.

Q&A with Thomas Vernay, dir. Miss Chazelles - Clermont 2020

Elise Loiseau — 2020-02-07T17:42:22Z

Clara and Marie are rival competitors for the title of Miss Chazelles-sur-Lyon. As Marie is declared winner of a local beauty pageant, tension escalates between both girls's families and supporters.

Miss Chazelles, Aesthetica 2019's Best Drama award-winner, is a warm, irreverent and somewhat terrifying look at the word of regional pageants and the resulting drama. Despite the absurdity of the situation and its more ridiculously over-the-top behaviour, Thomas Vernay's portrayal is never patronising; treating us to more complex dynamics between fully-fledged characters.

Trailer

Miss Chazelles - Bande Annonce from Thomas Vernay on Vimeo.

More on the film...

Tell us a little about how Miss Chazelles came to be.

I always have a hard time answering that question. There are so many reasons behind a film's origins… The most important, I think, was me really wanting to shoot a film in the village where I grew up. It's not a place I necessarily have fond memories of, and I've hardly ever gone back there since I was eighteen. I wanted to compare my childhood memories with the person I've become. I once read a story in the paper about a “war” between two beauty queens in a village in the South. That's what got things rolling. The other reason was that I wanted to create a role for Megan. I really wanted to make a film with her.

It initially seems as though the film represents stereotyped gender roles (beauty pageants for girls, violence for boys), and then ends up – no spoilers ! – thwarting those stereotypes. Is that how you intended things in the script?

Yes, of course. The film plays on stereotypes, caricatures. Even though everything is also very true to life. I wrote the script with intentional references to fairytale princesses, especially the ones Disney has adapted, which are mostly very sexist. The motorcycles that recall chargers, the two rival families, the sword, the standard, the celebration room that represents the ball, the “evil” twins, the father who's a dragon, the princess' dress, and so on. But then I tried to distance myself from all that and overturn the codes. It's a film about the social and emotional condition, dominated by men. Clara is surrounded by men who direct her constantly, who prevent her from becoming free. With each effort, she returns to her condition.

How did you work with the two lead actresses?

I'd worked with Megan on two previous videos. And I really wanted to work with her on a fiction film. With Alice, I was immediately taken with her during her casting call. I didn't necessarily see the character Marie like that, so I ended up moulding Marie to fit Alice. The character became softer, more introverted. Actually, it's a bit the same with Megan as well. I guess the character has a great deal of her essence. Working together was pretty regular. We met for rehearsals in order to get the tone and naturalness of the lines right. On the set, we rehearsed again before each scene. We made sure they owned their movements, the tempo and the lines. I think they both worked out wonderfully.

What works do you particularly admire?

I'm not being very adventurous given her filmography, but I love all of Andrea Arnolds' films. I like her characters, the way she directs actors and actresses. I love her composition, her colors, her dialogue. Her films are full of enthusiasm. I also really enjoy Kelly Reichardt. Meek's Cutoff is one of the most beautiful period films. Her female characters are strong and her films have something visceral about them. Then of course there's Jane Campion. This isn't very original, but The Piano Lesson is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Top of the Lake is still my favorite television series. But that's cheating since I don't really watch tv shows…

Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form provides?

Being able to make one, to start off. It's an accessible format. It allows you to keep costs down and shoot quickly. I produced it myself (through my production company) without receiving any financial assistance. I don't necessarily recommend doing that, it's hard. But it was a decision I made in a hurry, a necessity. I was free from the beginning to the end of the project. It was also the result of a remarkable team who I'd really like to work with again one day. Each person involved in this project, without exception, was enormously helpful, and there is a little bit of each of them in the film.

Q&A with Gabrielle Stemmer, dir. Clean With Me (After Dark)

Abla Kandalaft — 2020-02-07T16:11:27Z

Through a very clever and revealing video montage, Gabrielle Stemmer not only sheds light on somewhat depressing phenomenon of cleaning videos on YouTube but silently and subtly unearths the loneliness and neuroses that often underpin it, in a society in which women are homemakers and the home is their gilded cage.

How did you discover the “world” of YouTube?

I've been a heavy YouTube user for seven or eight years now – it's TV for me. I'd say that from the beginning I've been watching stuff that's 90% female-oriented. I started with videos on beauty, cooking, interior decorating, areas that I only have a scant interest in in real life. The conclusion I drew from this paradox is that what interested me was watching how other women experienced their own femininity, and seeing how far the mental burden could be constructed as a life strategy. The videos relax me since I watch them with a certain detachment, and at the same time they awaken a sort of quasi-anthropological curiosity in me. YouTube's algorithm decided it was time for me to explore the domestic side of the platform when CLEAN WITH ME appeared in my “recommendations based on my subscriptions”.

Did you contact any of those YouTubers?

I got into contact with each of the women who appear in the film, even if it was just to let them know that I intended to use their content. At the beginning of the project I was mostly corresponding with Jessica of “Keep Calm and Clean”, the YouTuber you see most in the film and who seesaws with the nervous off-camera of the cleaning videos. At the time, I'd talked to her about the project and suggested we meet on Skype later that year when the film would be further along. She was very open and enthusiastic but I ended up going down a different path that precluded that type of interview. I sent her the finished film by email, carefully explaining my approach and the viewer comments relative to her words, but she didn't reply. I don't know if she watched the film.

Tell us a bit about your cinematic choice. Why did you opt for this form of documentary (video montage, no voice-over, etc.)?

The topic and the form came together at the same time. And after I discovered Kevin B. Lee's film Transformers: The Premake, which blazed the trail, there was never a question in my mind about making the film in any other way than as a “desktop documentary”. I was also lucky enough to be able to talk to Lee several times throughout the film's production. The form makes it possible to get directly to the heart of the matter: the whole context is there on the screen, the images are connected to their manner of broadcasting but also to their position within a community. You also immediately put the viewer in a familiar environment that's part of their daily life as an internet user. That's why I made my narrator's presence more and more discrete throughout the editing process, in order to reinforce the viewer's identification with the consciousness that clicks. They forget the narrator-clicker in favor of the women who appear one-by-one on the screen and whose words I wanted them to hear. That's also why I wanted there not to be a voice-over. I wanted the film to move forward exclusively through the mouse, the keyboard, the windows that open and close, I wanted the viewer's gaze to be guided by the silent narrator, to be led on almost despite themselves, in a relentless march. Doubtless that was partially due to my fantasy as an editor, which is my initial calling, creating meaning exclusively by organizing images, their sequencing, their placement, their relationship to sounds.

These types of videos mostly come from the United States.Why do you think that is the case? Is the trend spreading?

That's a very good question. It's tempting to answer that American YouTubers make up the majority of this type of production on YouTube, but that's difficult to say given that through their algorithms, YouTube, like social networks in general, only show us what we're in the habit of watching. There are French housekeeping videos, for example, but they either copy American ones with less success, or they play on another niche that is more natural and biographical, which is very interesting but also very different. What made me want to use the American images was the fact that they all look the same. It was the uniformity of their appearance and of their houses that made me want to make a film about these women, because that produces infinitely meaningful images. Yes, of course, the trend is spreading and in quite vicious guises, which don't balk at using feminist terms, or the very trendy word “empowering”, to spur a return to the hearth that I personally find very disturbing.

What would you like people to take from your film?

I think we need to be educated about how we watch widely-broadcast audiovisual productions that are now part of our daily life and that we easily take in without sufficient distance, and that is problematic. Despite my own relatively detached way of consuming them, I can clearly see that these videos grew on me, and I was surprised to find myself under the influence of the influencers. What sort of role model do the images of women on YouTube channel for teenage girls? You only have to take a look at the comments under the videos to realize how big the problem is. At the same time though, there's hope on social networks and I don't think we should belittle their documentary benefit, which is something I wanted to show through my film. On YouTube and Instagram, women can express themselves without an intermediary, and on a large scale, two conditions that up to now have been inaccessible to women. What's at stake is genuine freedom of speech, especially with regard to topics that are typically feminine. My film addresses isolation and psychological suffering, but there are also many new voices to be heard about giving birth and about sexual violence.

What advantages has the short film format offered you?

Shorts make it possible to give a hint of something, to experiment. I'm not sure this type of narration could sustain a longer format… I'll think about it though. I think the fact that it was a short helped me to not try to be exhaustive and stuff everything I wanted to say into the film, and to privilege saying things clearly and making the development efficient. Shorts are less definitive than feature films and allow you to tell yourself that you'll get to everything else later.

Young and Alive / L'Epoque at LFF 2018

Abla Kandalaft — 2018-10-16T21:28:09Z

Young and Alive is not quite an apt translation of the original title of this film, L'Epoque, which in its subtitles has been translated as the more accurate "our times". Director Matthieu Bareyre was keen to stress this during the Q&A session that followed the screening at the London Film Festival.

The documentary had made its debut in Locarno and this was only its second screening. The first sequence is a series of still shots of French emblems and assorted images of political authority and dominance, or identity as the country likes to project, the statue of Marianne on Place de la Republique, Macron's laughing mouth, the Arc de Triomphe, interspersed with meaningful shots of shop windows and big advertising billboards underlining the rampant capitalistic spirit at play in the city. All to the sound of technobeats, all shot at night.

It's a powerful start to the doc. The monuments, the shops, the posters all appear as crushing monoliths, looming over the audience. This is the setting for the real subjects of Bareyre's documentary, young Parisians, sharing their hopes, dreams, aspirations and most particularly their anger and frustrations with the filmmaker. Mathieu Bareyre, who'd only shot one short (doc) - Nocturnes - before this decided to work on L'Epoque during the week that followed the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the murder of the paper's writers. Bareyre felt that things were going to kick off, that the aftermath of the attacks would see certain social repercussions that he wanted to capture and expose. One of these was the convenient eclipsing of issues that affected young people in France most directly - poverty, unemployment, career aspiration, racism, police violence - by terrorism that the media and the political class positioned as the one major danger facing the nation, one that justified all sorts of draconian surveillance laws and the sidelining of urgent social and economic problems.

Shooting at night on and off from May 2015 through to the presidential elections of May 2017, during protests, raves, clashes with the police, drunken escapades and friendly gatherings on the banks of the Seine, Bareyre found an eclectic mix of young people to interview: debauched business school graduates, talented freestyling rappers, eloquent cité-dwellers asking for journalists to come and see what life is like inside the sprawling housing estates, giddy couples, DJs, young protesters denouncing police brutality and racism...

It's mostly - business school students and their antics aside - a truly impressive line-up of talking heads. Bareyre managed to get them all to let lose, speak freely and share their innermost thoughts, and they do so with humour, talent, eloquence and intelligence. I at least left feeling both sad and angry at the abuses of power that they highlight and truly hopeful that they are part of the make-up of the new generation.

Bareyre has certainly made a daring film, in which the implicit denunciation of police violence and the repressive atmosphere of the post-Charlie Hebdo period will I imagine cause some degree of controversy. But hopefully it will enjoy a wide distribution. Nearly three years in the making, with 22 months of post-production, L'Epoque is a very moving, vibrant and courageous effort, especially given the fact that this is Bareyre's first feature. It will hopefully be the first of many!

For updates on the film, check its Facebook page. You can contact us directly or tweet us @mydylarama if you have any questions you'd like to ask director Matthieu Bareyre.

La Dream Team - Guillaume Coulaud pour A Voir A Lire

Guillaume Coulaud — 2018-03-20T16:56:33Z

Un "feel-good movie" footballistique dépourvu d'inventivité et n'échappant pas aux clichés.

L'argument : Maxime Belloc est un grand joueur de football, le meilleur buteur du championnat.Dans un geste de colère il se brise la jambe...Son agent le contraint de se mettre au « vert » le temps de sa convalescence chez son père à qui il ne parle plus depuis 15 ans. Là-bas, à sa grande surprise, Maxime va redécouvrir le sens des valeurs… et de la famille !

Notre avis : Le filon sur lequel joue La Dream Team, calque de celui de bon nombre de comédies que nous sert le cinéma français à longueur d'années, est somme toute assez simple. Il consiste à mettre ensemble deux incarnations de stéréotypes issus du formatage télévisuel afin de délivrer un message qui se voudrait fédérateur mais qui manque cruellement de justesse. Dans le cas qui nous intéresse, nous avons d'un côté, Maxime Belloc, footballeur, star du PSG, riche à millions, arrogant à souhait, véritable symbole bling bling. De l'autre, son village d'enfance, patelin berrichon répondant trait pour trait à l'idée que se fait le JT de 13H de TF1 de la campagne avec son décor bucolique et ses habitants si sympathiques. C'est une énième frasque qui conduit notre diva du ballon rond à retourner vers ses origines, retrouvant un mode de vie auquel il a tourné le dos depuis 15 ans et un paternel, agriculteur vieille école et entraîneur de l'équipe locale, très peu décidé à l'accueillir à bras ouvert. (...)

La suite sur A Voir A Lire !

La Ligne de Couleur, Paris press screening

Abla Kandalaft — 2015-06-10T09:45:04Z

This is one for the francophones amongst you....

Calling La Ligne de Couleur a documentary about the French “minority” experience would be reductive. It is this and much more. It is also a quietly moving and intimate collection of personal stories, “filmed letters” as director Laurence Petit-Jouvet calls them, that their authors read out loud. They are 11 French citizens, French born and bred, men and women, of various ethnic origins, displaying a palette of skin tones. Petit-Jouvet films them individually, reading out loud letters written to themselves, to a friend, a family member, or in one case, the French president.

They read their own words in an environment that is dear to them or symbolises the image of themselves they want the world to acknowledge; Petit-Jouvet has us follow them around Paris on a scooter, to a cemetery, a church, their places of work (a radio station, a recording studio), their homes. One writer spits out the words as he boxes, another tells them to her daughter in her bathroom, another recites them on a stage.
They describe instances in their lives when they have felt belittled, hurt, insulted, misunderstood as a direct result of their ethnicities. They talk about particular sticking points that have come to define how they see themselves, often borne out of prejudices and stereotypes so deeply embedded in the popular psyche that they often go unnoticed by most people and make it so hard for the recipient to reject. Fatouma, for example, struggles to encourage her daughter to embrace her natural afro-textured hair. The girl is upset when her mother washes it and lets it dry au naturel-without any braiding, straightening or relaxing. It looks lush and healthy but she tugs at it in an effort to flatten it and begs her mother to tie it back, or else she will be made fun of at school.

Yaya is from a cité in the Parisian suburbs, one of those large complexes of tower blocks that mushroomed between the 1950s and 1970s to house newly arrived immigrants from the ex-colonies, mainly brought in to help rebuild a post-war France.
In the public consciousness, these areas are synonymous with high unemployment and a concentration of second and third-generation immigrants. Yaya has a masters degree in psychology, he is well read, very articulate and clearly a gentle soul. But when he looks for work, the only job he is consistently offered is that of a security guard. He calls France “the country with the most qualified security guards in the world.” And it is because she refuses this state of affairs that Petit-Jouvet wants to shed light on these everyday instances of prejudice.

It's not all bleak; Yaya now occasionally works as a radio DJ for Radio France, the national, public service radio. In fact, the beauty of this documentary is that it refuses to strictly focus on the doom and gloom. Petit-Jouet explains that she didn't want to “push an already open door,” as she puts it, by underlining heavily certain clichés (and realities of course) of the pitfalls and miseries of belonging to an ethnic minority. She wanted to explore more latent forms of discrimination and question how this feeling of difference manifests itself and is handled by those men and women with much more subtlety. Petit-Jouet's lens focuses on what truly defines them, their hobbies, passions, families, careers, making their ethnicity entirely incidental. They all seem fairly comfortable and happy in their lives and careers; they are close to their families; some of them have children. They are psychologists, filmmakers, businessmen, councillors. And aside from a couple of cases, by and large, the writers have not been subjected to particularly violent cases of racial abuse.
Rather, they have faced more insidious discrimination. One of them talks about their skin colour as a sort of permanent filter through which white French citizens see them, thereby always tainting slightly whatever interactions they have. Another, Rui, talks about the traits that are de facto assigned to him as a man of Chinese origin: “studious, serious, asexual, timid”. Of course, these are part of the after-effects of history, colonialism and so on, but there are also obvious consequences of stereotypes often peddled by film and media.
Yumi is an actress and voice over artist whose parents are Japanese; her deepest passion is performing Racine's work on stage. Despite a flawless and clearly native French accent, she is only booked to dub the voices of characters from the four corners of South East Asia. Some of the instances of discrimination are more “explicit”. Soft-spoken Jean-Michel, born in Montreuil, whose parents are from the French West Indies, is occasionally stopped and searched because of his skin colour, despite having been “French for four centuries,” as he puts it, referring to the French sovereignty over the islands.

Importantly, They all consider themselves avowedly French and France to be their country. They have no apparent desire to belong to an ethnic or national community. You sense they would balk at being asked to tick an ethnicity box.
There is a lot to be said for the French education system, which is for the most part, free and inclusive. This certainly isn't to say that it isn't slowly being eaten away by increasing privation (fee-paying Grandes Ecoles encroaching on universities), deteriorating economic context, lack of funding, overstretched teachers.

Their attitudes also reveal the effects (for better or worse) of the French system of assimilation, integrating everyone under the colours and slogans of the French Republic. But it also reveals the dichotomy between the ambitions of such a system-that all citizens have equal rights and obligations before the law, and so feel a sense of belonging to the nation-and the reality on the ground-stop and search, violence, casual racism, odd looks...

As a viewer and a French national of foreign origins, and of what could be best called Mediterranean or Near-Eastern ethnicity, I had never thought of myself as “other”, it did make me think to what extent similar clichés and instances of latent racism had insidiously provoked certain reactions (lying about my origins, colouring and straightening my hair) or wonder whether I had a CV binned after a glance at my foreign name.

We have yet to see whether the film will enjoy screenings in the UK, but it would be very interesting for it to spark a discussion on what British audiences make of it, and if the stories told by second or third generation Brits would echo some of Yaya's, Patrice's, Yumi's or Jérémie's experiences.

Dir. Laurence Petit-Jouvet, 2015

The film is out in France on 17 June.
For more info and a look at the trailer: http://lalignedecouleur.com/

Les héritiers

Clotilde Couturier — 2014-12-12T17:06:07Z

« Les héritiers », personne ne m'en avait parlé. Parfois, vous allez au cinéma pour l'excuse, parce que c'est sympa de partager un moment avec un(e) ami(e) et qu'il faut bien se trouver une excuse. C'est ainsi que se font sans doute les plus belles rencontres, celles dont vous n'attendez rien. Car la rencontre avec ces « héritiers » fut grisante.

« Les héritiers » m'a beaucoup fait sourire. Car on voit à l'écran ceux qu'on voit dans les classes. Avec leurs sincérités et leurs excès. Avec leur capacité aussi, à faire effectivement preuve de respect quand ils sont confrontés au Respectable. Les personnages du film se mêlent à la mémoire et sont une réplique tellement exacte des Lycéens… Ce réalisme bouleversant ne fonctionne que grâce au travail efficace et appliqué de Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar qui parvient ainsi à nous immerger totalement dans la classe de Seconde du Lycée Léon Blum à Créteil.

Pour réussir cette immersion, « Les héritiers » sort du « Cinéma » au sens esthétique du terme, où la glorification du sujet par l'image transporte vers des perspectives fantasmées. Au contraire, c'est un film du réel qui nous est livré comme un joyau brut qui n'a pas encore été taillé et dont les facettes se devinent sans nous éblouir. Mais je ne crois pas au hasard. « Les héritiers » dénonce précisément, à plusieurs reprises, la manipulation du spectateur par l'image. L'image glorifiée, l'image embellie, l'image prédicative. Vous ne verrez pas de ces images travaillées dans « Les héritiers ». Pas d'étourdissement donc. Uniquement la puissance du Vrai et beaucoup d'ambition.

Car même s'il ne nous éblouit pas de séquences « trop stylées », il est impossible de douter du rayonnement des Héritiers.

C'est par ailleurs une véritable revanche sur les clichés. Dans « Les héritiers », il y a de tout et les personnages passent d'un schéma à l'autre sans vraiment respecter les cases, bien que chacun ait une personnalité qui lui est propre. De plus, chacun des élèves nous est montré comme un vecteur d'influence sur ses proches et le groupe dans son ensemble.

Bien sûr, le film propose une vision optimiste du réel et la réalisatrice a cédé à certaines tentations, comme la séquence du héros musulman qui efface les insultes antisémites. Mais il ne faut pas nier l'existence de ces petits gestes dans le réel. Ils arrivent et c'est important de le montrer, plutôt que de donner à voir uniquement l'opposition comme c'est souvent le cas avec les tristes Actualités. Une opposition qui n'est d'ailleurs pas négligée et qu'on rencontre dans « Les héritiers », un film toujours honnête.

Le geste du héros nous est par ailleurs livré avec une autre vérité : il agit car les insultes touchent des individus qui lui sont proches et avec lesquels il souhaite maintenir le lien… pour des raisons très personnelles. De fait, « Les héritiers » traite essentiellement de ce lien à l'autre. Et du rapport à la connaissance de l'autre par la plongée dans une réalité documentée. L'épigramme des Héritiers est d'ailleurs : « En comprenant l'Histoire, ils vont forger la leur ». Il est vrai que si nous perdons le lien avec l'autre, nous pouvons sans nous en rendre compte le stigmatiser, lui assigner une identité qui n'est pas la sienne mais un stéréotype, et cela est aussi montré dans le film… « Les héritiers » nous présentent toujours les deux visions d'une même question, le prisme individuel étant complètement mis à nu pour justifier chaque acte, ou presque. Un seul acte présenté dans le film restera sans explication, sans doute car il y a des actes qui dépassent certaines frontières et ne peuvent plus être expliqués. Chapeau bas à la réalisatrice qui réussit ainsi à couper tout lien avec une éventuelle velléité de propagande idéologique et met en évidence le jeu de funambule que doit mener à bien l'Ecole pour que chacun y ait sa place.

(c) Guy Ferrandis - UGC Distribution

Après avoir vu le film, il ne vous paraîtra ni surprenant ni étrange d'apprendre que « Les héritiers » est inspiré de l'histoire d'Ahmed Dramé, interprète de Malik dans le film, jeune de Créteil ayant lui-même traversé la classe de Seconde du Lycée Léon Blum il y a seulement 5 ans. Et que « Les héritiers » est d'abord issu de son rêve d'écrire des scénarios de films, de ses démarches personnelles auprès de réalisateurs, de son envie de témoigner sur cette année particulière, sur cette enseignante anti-morosité, sur ce Concours National de la Résistance et de la Déportation qui l'a transformé, lui. Il en a aussi tiré un livre dont le titre vous en révèlera un peu plus sur son sentiment personnel : « Nous sommes tous des exceptions. » (éditions Fayard)

« Les héritiers » est une leçon pour chacun de nous. Une leçon du succès, de la foi et de l'espoir. Une leçon aussi contre le racisme. Car oui, le noir de cité PEUT. Oui un noir de cité peut gagner un concours, oui un noir de cité peut écrire un film, oui un noir de cité peut aimer Goya, oui un jeune de banlieue peut réussir, sans voler des téléphones ou des voitures… S'esbaudir du truisme est d'un désuet !

Peut-être que « Les héritiers » est fait de trop d'Humanité et qu'une trop belle « happy end » attend notre Jeunesse… Ou peut-être qu'il est temps d'entendre ce message de bienveillance et de respect à l'égard de l'autre ? Pourquoi ne pas rejoindre la Fraternité ?

Dir : Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, 2014

Stranger by the Lake (L'inconnu du Lac)

Matt Bray — 2014-04-17T09:23:41Z

Alain Guiraudie's erotic gay thriller is located in rural France and takes place over ten summer days. Set on the shores of a vast inviting lake, a small group of men spend the day building up all-over tans in between swimming and cruising around the adjoining forest. We quickly fall into the world of the film and Guiraudie presents with ease the rituals that these gay men enjoy as they escape the confines of heterosexual society. However, we quickly feel that all is not well in ‘Gay Utopia'. Warnings of over-sized lake amphibians, the silent loneliness of dusk falling and the perceived dangers of anonymous outdoor sex, combine to give the lakeside location a palpable eeriness. That Guiraudie's camera never leaves this setting only intensifies our sense of dread.

So to the characters – Franck, (Pierre Deladonchamps) a chiseled beauty with mournful eyes, befriends out of shape loner Henri, (Patrick d'Assumçao) and develops a gentle, non-sexual relationship with him. Whilst chatting on the lakeside with his newly acquired friend, Franck eyes the object of his desire over on the beach - Michel, (Christophe Paou) who is swarthy, sporty and moustached; an archetypal grade-A hyper-masculine male. However, the course of true sex does not run smoothly. In the afternoon, Franck follows Michel into the forest only to find him with another man. In the evening, a greater obstacle to his emotions occurs when he thinks he witnesses Michel committing a crime.

As voyeurs we share Franck's shock – what in fact did we see occurring ? Dusk is falling – was there a crime or have our eyes tricked us? For Franck, there is a forceful sexual intrigue to what Michel may have done and soon the two embark on a highly sexed affair. Whether a crime was really committed will later become apparent.
Beautifully composed, clever, sexy and suspense-laden, Stranger by the Lake is a gem in the gay canon. The film's much talked about ending is lingering and perverse. In a world dulled by rational behaviour, Stranger by the Lake applauds a man who loses himself to passion and champions the liberation found in animalistic sex and wild emotion.

Dir: Alain Guiraudie, 2013

Jack et la mécanique du coeur

Clotilde Couturier — 2013-12-30T11:52:25Z

"Jack et la mécanique du coeur", film de Mathias Malzieu et Stéphane Berla, avec entre autres Jean Rochefort, Olivia Ruiz et Grand Corps Malade, nous emmène à la rencontre de la Musique, de Georges Méliès, de l'Amour, de Paris, de l'Aventure, de Don Quichotte, de l'Imprudence... car "quand à 14 ans on décide de traverser l'Europe pour retrouver une fille, c'est qu'on a le gène de l'imprudence assez développé, pas vrai ?!"

Le 5 février 2014, il sera enfin temps de découvrir « Jack et la mécanique du cœur » au Cinéma. En effet, l'adaptation cinématographique du livre « La mécanique du cœur », publié fin 2007, aura tourné quatre ans dans et entre les studios d'animation. Travaillé longuement, mijoté avec acharnement, mûri avec précision pour un résultat onctueux, le film « Jack et la mécanique du cœur » nous est enfin donné à savourer.

En début de séance avant le film, le clip de Dionysos, dont le chanteur Mathias Malzieu est l'auteur du livre, générique du film avec des extraits à l'image, peut surprendre. N'hésitez pas à le regarder à l'avance : http://www.vevo.com/watch/dionysos/jack-et-la-mecanique-du-coeur/FRUV71300485

Le film d'animation propose donc de suivre l'histoire de Jack, petit garçon « hors normes » et auquel ne seront pas épargnés les affres de l'enfant « différent » : stigmatisation, moqueries, exclusion… Il apprend ainsi à avoir honte et à se méfier de ce qui le rend différent. Ce rapport scénaristique à la dévalorisation de soi-même est particulièrement méritant car il est abordé ainsi au-delà de la règle imposée par un « coupable » et plutôt comme une évidence issue du quotidien de notre héros qui doit évoluer seul au milieu des pressions de la société qui l'entoure. En effet, le personnage de Joe, grand tourmenteur de Jack, est présenté capable d'une grande douceur, et portant une peine sincère, faisant de lui un « méchant » éloigné du manichéisme habituel aux films d'animation.

Evidemment, cette partie est courte par rapport à l'ensemble et l'essentiel du film repose au contraire sur le déploiement de Jack, sur les aventures fantastiques qu'il va vivre en France et en Espagne, et comment Jack parviendra à surmonter sa colère et sa peur pour vivre, enfin, pleinement.

La qualité de l'animation, aussi bien dans les détails, jusqu'aux grains de peau des personnages, que dans la maîtrise technique des « séquences Méliès », est exquise et permet d'apprécier chaque instant et chaque pixel du film.
Le choix artistique du complexe physique générant l'exclusion de Jack est tout aussi méritant : ce qui rend Jack différent, c'est son cœur.

Donc, Jack a un cœur horloge, particulièrement fragile et dont il faut remonter la mécanique régulièrement. Madeleine, obstétricienne-sorcière et chirurgienne de l'opération, prévient Jack de sa grande fragilité face aux émotions fortes, comme la colère et l'amour, et lui impose trois règles de conduite qui rythmeront son existence. Cette fragilité émotionnelle, sensée découler de la forme physique du cœur de Jack, est étudiée dans le film comme une réalité intrinsèque de l'individu influençant elle-même la force physique et psychologique du personnage. Ce n'est plus la mécanique qui fait le cœur, mais le cœur qui fait la mécanique.
Cette réalité ouvre évidemment de nouvelles perspectives à Jack, bien que le film nous rappelle qu'elle a aussi ses déboires.

Ainsi malgré tout, et malgré tous, Jack puise une grande force dans une rencontre particulière : l'Amour qu'il ressent pour Miss Acacia. Perdant sa trace, Jack traverse les épreuves de la vie et repart à la recherche de sa flamme dès qu'il en a l'occasion. Cette quête entraîne Jack, et le spectateur, dans de grandes aventures rebondissantes et dans de belles rencontres humaines. Le film passe vite, les enfants (5-10 ans à la séance où j'ai été) ne trouvent pas le temps long et ressortent, comme nous autres adultes, avec le sourire, la tête pleine de beaux paysages, de grandes émotions et de rêveries quant aux « alternatives possibles ».

Le film montre toujours les choses de manière symbolique et les images sont très douces, même dans les moments sombres. Très dynamique, et peuplé de (nombreuses !) séquences musicales de qualité, « Jack et la mécanique du cœur » peut ravir à tout âge !

Dir : Mathias Malzieu & Stéphane Berla, 2013

Le Sentiment de la chair

Jean-Louis Gonnet et Bruno Rolland — 2011-01-02T11:35:22Z

À l'occasion d'un examen médical, Héléna, étudiante en dessin anatomique, fait la connaissance de Benoît, un jeune radiologue. Partageant une meme fascination pour le corps humain, ils vont céder à un amour passionnel, mais à leur façon... La faculté d'Héléna à mémoriser le corps de Benoît dans ses moindres détails, l'irrésistible curiosité de Benoît pour les secrets « intérieurs » du corps d'Héléna, vont les mener au bord d'un d'un périlleux précipice dont ils ne mesurent pas l'étendue.

Déjà le titre nous met sur une piste qui nous intrigue : qu'ont en commun le sentiment et la chair ? On pourrait dire que ces deux termes s'opposent et c'est sans doute une des ambitions de Roberto Garzelli de les faire se rejoindre, de trouver ce qui les rapproche. Le film serait peut-etre ce chemin entre ces deux mots.

« Le Sentiment de la chair » est un film qui tente de réconcilier la tete et les sens. Ainsi Helena et Benoit se rencontrent sur un terrain commun, l'amour à bras le corps, l'obsession de l'autre jusqu'aux portes de la folie. « Aime-moi !, mange-moi ! » pourrait dire Helena. Là est tout le projet du film de Roberto Garzelli qui depuis ses premiers courts-métrages s'évertue à dévisager l'obsession chez l'être humain, comme si celle-ci n'était que notre seule façon d'accepter la vie, de la sublimer. Il s'empare ici de cette passion à pleines mains pour plonger physiquement dans le corps de l'autre. Et cette obsession prend corps dans cette volonté de connaître ou se cache le désir,derrière quel organe, d'ailleurs, ne serait-ce pas un organe ? Alors en bon pragmatique on explore le corps de l'autre jusque dans ses tréfonds, ses moindres recoins, et plus on semble s'en rapprocher et plus il s'éloigne.

« Le Sentiment de la chair » est un film double dans la façon dont Roberto Garzelli a de sculpter son histoire. Alors que son regard de cinéaste penche sans aucun doute vers l'école du naturalisme, il flirte cependant ici, au travers de son intrigue, avec un cinéma de genre, s'approchant parfois du « fantastique ». Et c'est ce mariage presque contre-nature entre la forme et son sujet qui nous trouble profondément et fait du « Sentiment de la chair » un film rare dans le paysage du cinéma Français.

Dir : Roberto Garzelli, 2010

Jean-Louis Gonnet et Bruno Rolland, cinéastes, membres de l'ACID
This review appeared on the ACID website : http://www.lacid.fr/