Submerged in the colours of infinite layers of history,
plunged in
the smell of the ocean,
driven by the energy of its cuisine and its surfers,
Gijon and its 55th International Film Festival were a total enchantment to me.
Its full house cinemas and the vivid films selection kept
our FIPRESCI Jury in a permanent state of emergency.
One engaging and aromatic
state though, rooted in the excitement
of film appacionados
and fuelled
with
that uncomparable spanish energy.
Responding to number of criteria
that have to do with
reason first and stenous film-making,
our Jury awarded Best Film
to the italian
first fiction of Dario Albertini,
the razorblade coming of age trip called
« Manuel » (Italy - 2017 - 1 h 37 mn - Director : Dario
Albertini - Producer : Angelo Barbagallo, Matilde Barbagallo - Screenplay :
Simone Ranucci, Dario Albertini - DOP : Giuseppe Maio - Editing : Sarah
McTeigue - Music : Ivo Parlati, Dario Albertini, Sarah McTeigue, Michael
Brunnock - Cast : Andrea Lattanzi, Franscesca Antonelli, Renato Scarpa,
Raffaella Rea, Giulia Elettra Gorietti).
It follows the route of Manuel, 18,
It follows the route of Manuel, 18,
in the suburbs of Rome.
A boy who must grow
faster than the teenagers of his age.
"These young people (from foster
homes) do not have a normal life, they lack something," says Dario
Albertini.
The charm of this film is striking and genuine. This young man is neither
revolted nor integrated. He could advance socially,
as well as he could sink
into felony,
and his dilemmae are the source of the dramatic tension of the
narrative.
Meetings
allow him to evolve alongside this road movie, towards adulthood.
The documentary skilled director has gone beyond this naturalistic context,
in
order to give a focal place to the minimalist scenario and the dialogues.
The
result is a clean and unsimulated story, but staged in the least details.
A memorable film, with glimpses of the Italian
neorealism,
not distant of the minimalism of the Dardenne brothers
or the
drastic cuts of Ken Loach.
And yet the director Dario Albertini does
not intend social criticism.
He allows the spectator to have opinions,
reactions, into the boundaries of optimism.
My heart, though, remained stuck to the first film of the
trendy french actor Vincent Macaigne : « Pour le Recomfort » .
It is a brutal and theatrical film,
porous and unstable,
vaguely inspired
by Cehov’s « Cherry orchyard » .
« Pour le Réconfort «
(« Comfort and Consolation in France ») bathes in a very unusual kind of optimism,
generated by its total
artistry.
Uncertainty, uncomprehension, anger, hathred…
As negative as they are,
all these feelings build up a very reassuring and warm film !
The genres, aesthetics, forms and
reflections employed by the artist in his process of creation are spreading
into each other.
The result is a film difficult to
classify.
With a content that could explode in our
face at any moment.
Vincent Macaigne does not know very well
what is happening in this world.
He does not know what to really do.
Therefore he
shouts out his impotence,
in every possible form.
Here lies the paradox of his
work, as it is especially generous in despair.
Its subject is simple :
Pauline and Emmanuel return to the lands
of their familly, somewhere near Orleans, trying to pay the taxes for their
very coveted domain. It is also an opportunity
to meet up with friends from
their childhood. Their stories, their responsabilities,
their opinions and
their aspirations, everything is now opposing them into two distinctive camps.
They are
Joséphine and Laurent,
the proletarians ;
Manu and Laure, petits bourgeois.
Memories, resentments, jealousies, rehashing …
Beyond
the evocation of a happy or a painful past, reproaches fuse,
frustrations and
resentment resurge.
To
the impotent dreamers,
are now opposed the pragmatists.
To the naive "ecologists",
the
unconditionals of progress.
This is a
« Cherry orchyard » reviewed and corrected according to the France
2.0.
With its
« winners », its social fractures, its traditions.
A France where
utopias are meant to be crushed under rentability and efficiency.
This is such a
disenchanted social fable,
that
none of its characters offers the slightest empathy.
So
we find ourselves in a situation of rare discomfort
because we are unable to
identify with any of them.
This handful of men and women will debate and
struggle on screen,
will focus all the contradictions of a generation, of an
era.
And,
more broadly, of a nation.
There
are the rich
who have everything
and those who lose everything.
There are the
poor
who have nothing
and those who start to be no longer poor. There are the
citizens of the world,
and individuals
of modest origin
who have never left their homeland.
They
hate each other
and do not hesitate to say it or to show it.
The audience
receives frontally fragments of these verbal jousts,
fueled exclusively by
fear, anger and sadness.
The
film excells in this impossibility of deciding what defines our reality.
Who
of Pascal, Pauline, Emmanuel, Laure, Josephine or Laurent is right?
Vincent
Macaigne presents most dialogues in the form of close frames / contrechamps which
give the viewer the feeling
that each of the replicas is addressed to him.
And
then something in the fiction breaks up.
A
homeless man delivers, in tears, his desire to free future generations from the
horrible world in which we wade.
The sequence, overwhelming, opens a door to
reality.
The
danger would have been that the film pours into caricature, if not nihilism.
Yet
Vincent Macaigne avoids it with grace.
If
there is a climate of dull violence,
both internal and external,
it is because
“Pour le Recomfort” is placed under the sign of life that runs.
A
false "everyday" speach,
falsely deep and falsely serious…
…
a melancholic nothing,
that
reveals itself as light,
and
bewitching,
and
poetic…
Behind
hopelessness, contradictory opinions and radical emotions,
we admire that gang
of outstanding, brilliant actors.
They are obviously just happy to gather around an old
camcorder,
with a simple idea and a friendly director.
When Pascal kisses Pauline's forehead while
whispering to her that "it's okay",
he talks less to his sister than
to his real friend,
the director.
And
that is the reality of the shooting.
So
the film turns into a strange,
almost optimistic documentary
about the curative
functions of art.
Beyond
this politically incorrect discourse, cynical about a societal status quo that
seems timeless,
“Pour le Recomfort” stands out especially
by the very theatrical
play of its interpreters(all employed by the Comedie Francaise).
Such
in the scenes devoted to Emmanuel's hysterical jabs.
The
overplay of the interpreter, Emmanuel Matte, is nevertheless the occasion of
replicas that are destined to become the most memorable of the film:
"The future is old age" or
"The weak, it is numerous!".
The way that Vincent Macaigne and his troupe have captured the french
ideological disenchantment
turns “Pour le Recomfort” into a comedy, both
offbeat and challenging .
This
filmic object,
imperfect
and uncomfortable,
but
asumed as subversive,
is
above all the proof that the talent of director Vincent Macaigne is to follow
very closely.
Vincent
Macaigne's art is enchanting the landscapes,
it composes meaningful images that
we do not forget.
Such as a twilight, or a granite cross that cuts through the
sky.
The
horrors of class hatred,
the unhealthy mediocrity of some,
the vulgar arrogance
of others,
are all boiling in this film that does not deceive.
It
is not just an uncontrolled rough draft.
But,
on the contrary, it is a virulent return of the repressed, which is not without
resonance in the France of Macron.
Giulia
Dobre
