mon chateau en Espagne: sleek account of the Gijon International Film Festival in 2 films

GIJON 55

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, 

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