Anthony Marciano, le réalisateur de Play, et son acteur principal Max Boublil ont consolidé leur collaboration artistique dans l’écriture humoristique avant de se lancer dans le cinéma. Et les sketches de ce film, avec leur intelligence descriptive, resteront les moments les plus brillants d’une mosaïque d’épisodes qui ne tient que grâce à un tempo soutenu. Autrement, ce qui se présente comme le récit autobiographique de Max (Max Boublil) à travers les extraits vidéo récoltés depuis le début de son adolescence joue trop maladroitement la carte du « vrai » auto-documentaire. Malgré une reconstruction historique des années 90 et 2000 assez convaincante, nous ne pourrons que soupçonner assez rapidement une mise en scène de tous ces prétendus fragments de home movies.

En effet, le visionnage de Play redevient intéressant justement dès que l’on se place à une certaine distance de l’effet immersif voulu par le projet : on y « voit » alors ce que Marciano imagine être un document, tout en y découvrant aussi les scènes qu’on jugera bien trop « cinématographiques ». Cette lecture au deuxième degré du film s’avérera être un formidable exercice d’identification des limites entre documentaire et fiction, lesquelles seront destinées à se dissoudre avec l’avancement temporel du récit. Car, en se rapprochant de notre présent, la texture des images et leurs décors nous replongent dans l’histoire en redonnant son importance à l’immersion cinématographique. Ce sera alors le moment d’une autre découverte intéressante : celle d’un récit par impressions, lequel paraît assez convaincant grâce à un usage des ellipses tout à fait cohérent avec le genre du vlog.

Certes, au-delà de cette double « expérience de la forme », il ne nous restera pas grand-chose de Play — dont la narration est alourdie par beaucoup de clichés sur l’adolescence et la jeunesse, et par une histoire d’amour un peu conventionnelle (même si elle est bien montrée dans son réalisme douloureux…) —, sinon qu’il faut souligner la belle performance des acteurs, en particulier celle d’Alice Isaaz dans le rôle d’Emma.

Play | Film | Anthony Marciano | FR 2019 | 105’

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A rocky trucker singing O sole mio in out of tune Tibetan while driving across the desert plains of the Kekexili Plateau at more than 5000m of altitude, and transporting a bloody dead sheep on the front seat next to him, would be enough to intrigue anyone. The opposition of a second protagonist – who has the same name as our trucker (Jinpa) – who is resolved to kill his father’s killer after ten years of hesitation, and the dissimilarities between the surprisingly pious and sensitive character of the rocky Jinpa and the surprisingly bad manners of the other Jinpa, who is still dressing in old-fashioned and traditional clothes, are just some amongst the many ingredients that make this film so exotic. “Instagrammed” images, both highly exposed and with deeply saturated colours, add an aesthetic flavour from the Seventies; together with rare, sententious dialogues, they define a cinematic style longing for epics.

Pema Tseden clearly likes the atmosphere of Sergio Leone’s films, and we should remark that the Western genre seems to be à la mode in recent Chinese film productions – I refer to a genre that has to be distinguished from the wuxia genre; see for example Qungshu Gao’s Wind Blast (2010), Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land (2013) or Liang Sung’s Kill the Shadow (2017). In order for an epic style to be effective, strong personal or collective dramas should sustain the epic rhetoric. Now, despite some timid reference to the practices concerning the respect of karmas, Jinpa sinks us into a foggy narrative, where potential metaphors reduce themselves to vague allusions, and our expectations are largely deceived by the very few pieces of information. Many plots become possible, which waters down the cogency of the drama; the urgency in which a hero is made remains suspended at unintelligible implications, thereby becoming fanciful.

Jinpa is probably no more than an atmosphere, and it challenges us with the discomfort and pleasure of open meanings, yet the highly connoted Western aesthetic still communicates a well-defined eulogy of the individualist outsider – rigorously male – and this makes us reflect on the transformation of a society – both the Tibetan and the Chinese – that has long been very far from the (very cinematic) world of cowboys.

Jinpa | Film | Pema Tseden | CHN 2018 | 86’ | FIFF Fribourg 2019, Black Movie Genève 2020

Best Screenplay at Orizzonti section at Venice Festival 2018

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”My life is a gunshot”, when said by the Swiss artist Joke Lanz, can mean at least two things, the first  being that his life was determined, for better or for worse, by the gunshot with which his father killed himself. Marcel Derek Ramsay dedicates a large part of his film to this traumatic episode in the life of the young Lanz, whose consequences still weigh on his life today, mostly in terms of consciousness of the suffering and of the need for freedom and liberation from the societal conformism. This theme, which is connected partly to his relationship to Switzerland, recurs obsessively in My Life Is a Gunshot, but not as frequently as the image of Lanz’s face, which appears to be Ramsey’s own obsession. These two obsessions actually work as ballast to balance an explosive, high-paced and high-spirited filmic journey into the amazing world of an artist who is able to transform anything into an occasion of expression and creation.

Here is the second meaning of “my life is a gunshot”; referring to the volcanic mode of creation of Joke Lanz, for whom the matter of sound – music and noise confounded – is in perfect continuity with the matter of humanity and the matter of the world. Lanz’s fundamental intuition is that the shout of suffering can be seen as, heard as or transformed into the cry of a newborn baby – and that is why his life-long project is named “Sudden Infant”. The destructive power of a gunshot therefore becomes more than just liberation from a hostile world; it is a regeneration that gives a narrative form to the seemingly shapeless shout.

In this, Ramsay’s formal choices for the film are brilliantly coherent with Lanz’s art and philosophy: thanks also to Peter Bräker’s impressive sound editing, Ramsay was able to manage a huge amount of material, blending an explosive and fast rhythm with a narrative structure that alternates the emotive moments with the informative ones. When form matches content in cinema, a stronger experience is guaranteed –experienced here with the discovery of a highly original sound artist or, better, sounding artist.

My Life Is a Gunshot | Film | Marcel Derek Ramsay | CH 2019 | 91’ | Solothurner Filmtage 2019

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It's not a masterpiece and it’s slightly too long. I took issue with Al Pacino's screen-filling over acting, while Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino, who has never been that brilliant, is frightening. He is a form of power that tends to vanish in plain sight, becoming more and more silent, while silencing his counterparts. Real power makes itself invisible. As a complete anti-nostalgic analysis of different types of bodies of power, the film could not be better.

We have four bodies of power: a silent power (Pesci/Bufalino), a power that counts on physical presence & aura (Pacino/Hoffa), a petit bourgeois executive power that tries to do a good job and to protect his family (De Niro/Sheeran), and also a crucial – albeit withdrawn – counter-power, a counter-shot: the perspective of Frank Sheeran’s daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina/Anna Paquin), realizing the normality of violence.  A class struggle that is taking place in the mafia. Frank Sheeran, who was part of the so called “Killer Division" in WWII, continues the killing in the name of the mafia, teaming with the “Teamster International” President Jimmy Hoffa, the employer of his future hangman. It’s a film about the banality of evil, about receiving execution-orders while re-filling and eating cereals.

Scorsese’s characters never change, they go in circles, loops: repeated ice-cream, repeated cereals, repeated killing, repeated cigarette breaks (on the way to the killing). Like U.S. Marshal “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo D Caprio) in Shutter Island, the Irishman re-enacts the WWII-killings physically. Habitus is a lazy shifter. De-Aging technology is the curse of repetition: every face looks like Silvio Berlusconi, while the tired body repeats what has been (done) and will have been (done). At the end, there is no shame, no regret, but only fear of death: Please leave the door open, Ma, just a crack, as always. My paradise is the audience. I scream, you scream, we all scream, for ice cream. Oh, and cereals. I love Scorsese’s “cerealism”, so full of details. Of course: nothing new, but including some crucial differentiations and shadings. The scene in which De Niro calls Hoffa's wife to tell her about Hoffa's assassination is a little diamond of “experimental stutter poetry”.

After working through everything in such a profound and sober way, Scorsese should be through with gangsterism now, and make a little comedy next. I can't think of a director who so consequently has dealt with toxic masculinity like Scorsese. Maybe only John Cassavetes, but they have a lot in common (as is well known).

The Irishman | Film | Martin Scorsese | USA 2019 | 209’

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Viesturs Kairišs, apprezzato regista in campo operistico, cinematografico e teatrale, sceglie di aprire il film con l’esibizione di una cantante lirica che intona “Un bel dì vedremo” durante una rappresentazione di Madama Butterfly presso il Teatro dell’Opera di Riga, improvvisamente interrotta dal rumore di una porta sfondata. È il 1941 e un manipolo di soldati sovietici arresta Melānija Vanaga, suo figlio e suo marito Aleksander, un importante capo-redattore. L’inizio della pellicola non è certamente frutto di scelte casuali: l’aria presenta forti connessioni tematiche con l’odissea narrativa esperita da Melānija ed alla prima scena ambientata nel teatro, dai contorni onirici, segue un brusco risveglio: la famiglia di notabili lettoni, sospetta di «collaborare con il nemico», viene subito divisa (da una parte il padre; dall’altra, madre e figlio), deportata e condannata ai lavori forzati.

The Chronicles of Melanie presenta diverse affinità con il film estone In the Crosswind di Martti Helde (2014), ma adotta un linguaggio meno sperimentale e decisamente più crudo e verosimigliante nel raccontare le tragiche deportazioni di massa del Baltico. Il viaggio iniziale in treno bestiame, lungo ben tre settimane, è già ricco di angoscia ed incertezza: in questa sequenza, in particolare, si segnalano il suicidio per sgozzamento di una donna e dei suoi tre figli, in preda alla disperazione, ed il suono prodotto dallo stridio delle ruote sui vagoni unito al forte ronzio degli insetti, il quale svolge la funzione di chiaro presagio di morte.

La fotografia, qui interamente in bianco e nero e firmata da Gints Bērziņš, ha il compito di rappresentare un passato ormai lontano e di moderare, almeno in parte, la violenza del film. Inoltre, valorizza sapientemente l’espressività dei volti degli interpreti, su tutti quello di Melānija (Sabine Timoteo), ripetutamente segnato dalle sofferenze e caratterizzato da uno sguardo fortemente eloquente. La recitazione, nel complesso asciutta e credibile, offre i suoi momenti più preziosi nei silenzi e nelle pause: a titolo d’esempio, si possono citare la visione del marito da parte di Melānija nella foresta innevata e i suoi attimi di commozione nel ricevere una lettera dal figlio dopo molti anni di separazione, mentre giace in un letto d’ospedale. In una delle ultime scene, ritornano le note dell’aria iniziale e notiamo Melānija visibilmente affranta nello scoprire della morte del marito, con il quale cerca un ultimo contatto toccando, fede al dito, le impronte digitali riportate sul documento che ne attesta la scomparsa, avvenuta molti anni prima. Ciononostante, il finale regalerà un inaspettato barlume di speranza.

The Chronicles of Melanie è una toccante storia di coraggio e resilienza e si inserisce nel più ampio quadro di narrazioni del secondo conflitto mondiale del cinema baltico, con le quali condivide molti dei suoi tropi e parte delle sue scelte estetiche. Le vicende di Melānija si dipanano nel corso di sedici anni e sono state rese note solo nel 1991, a seguito della pubblicazione delle sue memorie e del raggiungimento dell’indipendenza lettone.

The Chronicles of Melanie | Film | Viesturs Kairišs | LV-CZ-FI 2016 | 120’ | Filmpodium Zürich 2019

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Madame – Im Zeichen der Liebe zu sich selbst

Zu Beginn des Films, lackiert er seine Nägel schwarz – aus Protest, Trauer oder blosser Exzentrik? Er, das ist Stéphane Riethauser, seine Hände und seine Stimme aus dem Off leiten die Blicke der Betrachtenden im Dokumentarfilm Madame durch das Foto- und Videoarchiv seiner Familie. Stéphane hat gleich zwei bewegende Lebensgeschichten zu erzählen: die seiner Grossmutter Caroline, einer Matriarchin wider Willen, und die seines eigenen Coming-out in einer Familie mit grossen Erwartungen an den Erstgeborenen. Sicherlich ist es Glück, dass Riethauser auf wertvolles Bildmaterial, das in der Zeit weit zurückführt, zugreifen kann, und doch ist es seine geschickte Montage, die alles zu einem dichten und nahbaren Familienporträt werden lässt. Unkommentiert zeigte die Collage aus Familienfotos, Hochzeits-, Urlaubs-, Geburtstags- und Alltagsaufnahmen lediglich ein verklärt-harmonisches Bild der privilegierten Genfer Bourgeoisie. Doch dem ist nicht so, geleitet von Stéphane Riethauser als präsenten Erzähler beginnt eine mal schonungslos ehrliche, mal überspitzt ironisierte und doch immer um Selbstreflexion bemühte Reise in die Familiengeschichte der Riethausers.

Mit einer Mischung aus Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht nähert er sich dem Leben seiner Grossmutter. Als Tochter italienischer Einwanderer wurde Caroline als junges Mädchen zur Heirat gezwungen. Später musste sie, die geschiedene Mutter eines Kindes, hart für ihr Auskommen und schliesslich für den Erfolg arbeiten. Dieser wurde ihr von der damaligen Gesellschaft mit Missgunst und Spott vergolten. Der Reiz von Riethausers dokumentarischem Experiment liegt im Bruch zwischen Bild- und Tonebene. Erst durch seine Kommentare entstehen neue Kontexte – eine Erzählung, die sich der biografischen Chronologie entzieht und beide Lebensläufe geschickt miteinander verbindet. So kontrastiert er etwa die erschütternde Erzählung seiner Grossmutter von der schwierigen Zeit der Geburt ihres ersten Kindes, als sie alleingelassen und ohne eine gesicherte Existenz dastand, mit Videobildern aus Stéphanes eigener wohlbehüteten frühen Kindheit. Gleich darauf sehen wir den etwa dreijährigen Stéphane auf einem hübschen Pferdchen eines Kinderkarussells in warmem Herbstlicht schaukeln, musikalisch untermalt mit einer von Verdis erhabenen Opern.

Sehr viel härter geht Stéphane Riethauser mit sich selbst ins Gericht. Er zeigt einerseits den Erwartungsdruck seiner Familie und der Gesellschaft. Andererseits offenbart er die aus seiner jugendlichen inneren Zerrissenheit resultierenden misogynen und homophoben Gedanken. Riethauser gibt sogar Einblick in seine Tagebücher, die er als junger Erwachsener schrieb. Durch sie wird das Zwiegespräch, das er mit sich selbst über Jahre hinweg führte, am eindrücklichen sichtbar. Grossmutter und Enkelkind haben in ihrem Leben sehr unterschiedliche Widerstände überwinden müssen. Was sie verbindet, ist, dass sie gegen die Erwartungen ihrer Familien handeln mussten, um sich selbst treu zu bleiben. Und so besetzt letztlich auch die Beziehung zwischen ihnen die Hauptrolle im Film. Ihre Beziehung und ihre Freundschaft, ihre Gespräche und das Ausbleiben dieser, bis das Unaussprechliche schliesslich zutage kommt. Madame ist ein bewegendes Familienporträt, ein mutiges Zeitdokument und ein pointierter Appell an die Akzeptanz. Doch allem voran wird es nie zur selbstverliebten Nabelschau, sondern erzählt zwei Lebensgeschichten im Zeichen der liebevolle Suche nach sich selbst.

Madame | Film | Stéphane Riethauser | CH 2019 | 94’ | Visions du Réel 2019, Locarno Film Festival 2019

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Screenings in Swiss cinema theatres 

Je n’ai pas été étonné de découvrir que Stéphane Batut, dont c’est la première expérience en tant que réalisateur de longs-métrages, a un passé de directeur de casting. Les deux figures principales de Vif-Argent, Juste et Agathe, sont complexes, riches, évolutives. Thimotée Robart (à son premier rôle !) et Judith Chemla brillent et font briller un récit qui explore les limbes entre la vie et la mort avec beaucoup de sensualité. Si la narration se déploie au niveau des hallucinations, des fantômes, des rêves, elle ne tombe pourtant pas dans le compte allégorique, car Batut structure le film par des scènes de grande intensité émotionnelle, avec une attention réaliste aux détails. Vif-Argent sait donc occuper un espace intermédiaire entre le registre mythologique — comment ne pas penser à Orphée — et celui du quotidien, un espace qui coïncide avec le XIXe arrondissement de Paris, magnifiquement mis en image — et en couleurs… — par Céline Bozon. Il s’agit d’un monde transfiguré et imaginé, qui sait encore rester un lieu de découverte.

Le cinéma de Stéphane Batut est un cinéma de récit, de récits dans les récits, donc solidement ancré dans une certaine tradition française. Mais il est aussi — et ici il me semble se distinguer nettement des productions françaises contemporaines — un cinéma qui aime mélanger réel et fictif à l’écran, qui ose montrer des fantômes, des morts vivants, peut-être des anges. Nous avons besoin de beaucoup de temps pour rentrer dans cet espace onirique, où les souvenirs se matérialisent — un peu à la Apichatpong —, mais il s’agit d’un parcours où la difficulté de compréhension nous accompagne dans une sorte de lent chemin de désintoxication du regard clinique où Juste est initialement placé.

L’intrigue aurait peut-être pu se passer de quelques développements un peu tordus, difficiles à suivre, qui alourdissent le lyrisme du film (par exemple Juste, le mort vivant, meurt une deuxième fois, sans mourir vraiment, mais en passant à un nouveau stade de mort vivant, où non seulement il n’est pas vu par les vivants — et cela seulement par moments, à vrai dire — mais lui-même ne peut plus voir les vivants, sinon indirectement). Or, peut-être Batut a-t-il voulu tout simplement nous amener à un moment où nous ne pouvons qu’abandonner le souci de compréhension pour embrasser une parfaite confusion du souvenir et du présent, de l’imaginé et du réel. Car dans l’état d’urgence existentielle qui émerge au frottement de la mort avec la vie, la connaissance et la certitude cèdent la place à ce que l’on voit — réel ou fictif — à ce que l’on croit, à ce que l’on sent.

Vif-Argent | Film | Stéphane Batut | FR 2019 | 106’ | Geneva International Film Festival 2019

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Capriciously related to the plot of Alfred Hitchcock´s Vertigo, Guy Maddin and brothers Evan & Galen Johnson´s The Green Fog is a parodical Frankenstein assembled from pieces from movies and television shows set in San Francisco. As it was commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society to be premiered at the close of the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival on April 16, 2017, the film has been easily classified as a tribute or homage, even a remake. Maddin himself has employed terms such as «emotional geography» and «rhapsody on Vertigo» when asked about this lecture on creative stealing and film scholarship with plenty of funny (sometimes sombre) echoes of a romantic thriller.

In some way The Green Fog invite us to forget Hitchcock and play with the idea of how ridiculous can be a film and/or some ways to watch it. Radical subtractions and humorous additions become tools to construct a weird artefact to prove that authorship survives any attempt to supplant its genuineness; it doesn´t matter who is implied, if Mr. Ed Wood or Sir Orson Welles. At the same time, Maddin and his witty henchmen emerge clear winners from this unsafe zone where Vertigo is a stimulating absence. Its exercise of style consists of unpicking the seam of this classic of suspense and replacing it with an anthology of homeless shots and guillotined conversations.

In this deliciously campy Atlas Mnemosyne of Frisco portrayed by cinema and TV, Maddin & the Johnson Brothers tie the tongues of some characters, launch a Hamletian, contemplative Chuck Norris, and reduce its main referent to a fragment of the stairs seen in the rooftop chase. Throughout this process what was a detective movie turns into a comedy, seriousness gives way to cunning frivolity. If it’s true that there’s always something of burlesque in films that supplant the mood of an original story by strained gravity sthen in The Green Fog any operation is permeated by a disquieting and typically maddinesque malice. The awareness of dealing with shots that have lost their natural hors-champs increases the strangeness of this creature begotten by cinephilia and an acute sense of the uncanny. Ceci n'est pas Hitchcock.

The Green Fog | Film | Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson | USA 2017 | 63’

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