I felt that between Seeds of the wild fig tree by Mohammad Rasoulof and Emilia Perez by Jacques Audiard, we were going to be able to talk about cinema. As we talk about the two jaws of the vice that squeezes our hearts with admiration, or our guts with jealousy. Of discouragement, too, so much is the work that these two films required breathless, exhausting. A work of a very different nature. Although the men are big bastards and the women unfortunate, everything opposes these two films, the risk-taking, the means, the genre, and I’m not talking about the aesthetics, the rhythm. Only the Cannes palms and the success of the theaters give them a family resemblance. Otherwise, is it really the same art that we are talking about? If I can only testify that yes, it is because I was each time sitting in an armchair and in front of a “movie” screen.
Reality and imagination, an old story already repeated here. Ineffable heartbreak. Cinema no longer has much of a national identity, globalization and the Internet have passed through where artificial intelligence will finish razing the table.
Could it be that we now have to watch films two by two, as if we needed a mother and a father to form an opinion on what we saw? This would be the advent of the great day when saying to ourselves “You liked it, yeah, I loved it” will no longer be enough. Why does Audiard’s film take so long to start? The time for me to calm down about what I expect from it? It’s possible. There is also the fact that the improbable, the crazy, the unbelievable, requires a period of acclimatization, the crossing of the garden of the same name. What are these wild animals doing in the Bois de Boulogne? But it was filmed in a studio, you idiot, it’s normal that you don’t believe it. It takes you a while to understand that you are not here to believe it, Dora will tell me in substance, who, herself, immediately felt reassured, having been so afraid of being afraid. If it sings, it is because it is not going to hurt. And if the mean, coarse, infected narco becomes a beautiful plant, I am in a fairy tale.
When Audiard displays his knowledge
What I observe is the finesse, the duration of Emilia’s gaze on her past that has disappeared from her crotch, what, six images, twelve images, I should be able to ask Juliette Welfling, the editor assigned to the five unequaled titles, that: the duration of this axial gaze that makes the shift of the story, of the film, by the yardstick of this fraction of a second the elegance of the two accomplices is measured. If you missed that, you haven’t seen the film. Go back to it. All of Jacques Audiard is there. Already, in Of Rust and Bonethere was this very wide shot, in the forest, near a lake, I only remember the distance of the camera which made the surface occupied by the key action of the film seem tiny. I forgot what it was about. We don’t care about the story when it’s intelligent.
Easier, no less pivotal, the moment when the child recognizes the smell of his father. I hadn’t been told that yet, I who am in some way the world specialist in filial sorrow in cinema. Tears of applause.
To summarize, it comes to me, I would say that Rasoulof told a story while Audiard showed off his knowledge. It’s great to show off your knowledge, I don’t understand why it’s taken as meanness. I’m not talking about talent, genius, I’m talking about knowledge, that of a guy who has his own and develops it, nourishes it, and who shows it off a little more with each film. So obviously, we don’t have, as we did when we left Rasoulof’s film, the desire to save the planet, to preserve species, those that tear off the veil, those that change sex. Jacques Audiard is not at risk of going to prison because of this film. Although… And Rasoulof still has many years ahead of him to create a cinematographic knowledge that can be shown off.
Pure art and hard life, like the two jaws at the beginning, grind their teeth, say bad words, like damn, cinema is good.
Christophe Donner, writer
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