Since I saw Claude Baechtold’s film, Riverboom, I can’t meet anyone without talking to them about it anymore, I’m crazy about this film, I stammer about it, I can’t explain to people why they should go and see it, in the end I say: It’s coming out on the 25th. This morning again, with Nicolas, on the phone, I first tried to tell the beginning of the film, which looks like a Belgian comedy film. I like Belgian films, it’s a whole school of laughter, since Poelvoorde, Damiens, besides I don’t know if they make anything other than comedy films, the Belgians… Oh yes, the Dardenne brothers, of course. I liked them, at the beginning. Now, I’m a bit fed up, I’m waiting for them to make a comedy film about the misery of the world. Which is what Claude Baechtold’s film is a bit like, with in baseline : War is funny when it’s done well.
To convince Nicolas to go, I probably made the mistake of telling him the beginning of the film: three Swiss, because it’s not a Belgian comedy film, it’s a French film made by the Swiss, which is perhaps the same thing, in short, they’re in a car in Kabul and they have to go around Afghanistan. When I told Nicolas that on the phone, I felt that he wasn’t passionate, he let out a breath that was almost a sigh… And when I specified that it was set in 2002, just after the Americans arrived, he let out a jaded “meh”, like “excuse me, but I don’t really get the comedy of it”. But Nicolas, it’s not a comedy film! That’s what’s great. Listen to the rest…
Are they completely crazy?
One of the three is an art photographer. A black and white photojournalist. His name is Paolo Woods. The other is a journalist, his name is Serge Michel, at the time a senior reporter at Figaro, to which he must deliver a series of articles, like a summer soap opera, on this country of savages where the Americans are in the process of establishing democracy, ridding us once and for all of Bin Laden and confirming to us how good it is to live in France.
“But it’s a reconstruction? – That’s what I thought, at first, but no, it’s real, filmed at the time. – Mmm mmm.”
The third, I continue, is Claude Baechtold, the director of the film. He is the same age as the others, thirty, but he looks ten years younger. He was taken on the adventure by Serge Michel, and by chance. One of those chances that fall on you when you are a little lost. Baechtold has even been completely lost since his parents died in a car accident: “Come on, Claude, come with us, you will be our driver, it will take your mind off things.” I no longer know exactly how or why Baechtold ends up with a camera, bought at the local grocery store in Kabul, but after several hundred kilometers he realizes that his camera does not only take photos, it can also make films.
A few hundred kilometers later, he understands that you have to press this button to record the sound. This device may have the size and look of an electric razor, and be the laughing stock of the people it takes pictures of, but it nonetheless arouses the annoyance, then the worry, of Paolo, the art photographer. The rivalry between the great professional of the image and the amateur is one of the most enjoyable comic springs of the film. Our hilarity, through the crazy risks they take in this country at war, is due to the permanent doubt imposed by the director: are they completely crazy or do they know it?
And despite all that, so badly told, I couldn’t get Nicolas interested in this film. So I dropped the last argument, which I won’t reveal, for fear of being seen as a dirty “spoiler”, but which thrilled my resistant Nico.
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