Tag: Philippe Garrel

The Plough (Le Grand Chariot)

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QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN

Louis (Louis Garrel), Léna (Léna Garrel) and Martha (Esther Garrel) work with their father (Aurélien Recoing) and grandmother (Francine Bergé) in a travelling puppet show somewhere in France. The mother passed away years earlier, leaving the closely-knit family more united than ever. They work day and night in order to craft the dolls and also the dialogues that will elicit laughter from the small but attentive audiences. The crowds consist entirely of small children, particularly girls.

Louis is the only one whose heart isn’t entirely in the family business. He dreams of becoming a painter. He invites his inseparable friend Pieter (Damien Mongin) to work with his family, a good-looking young man who shares the canvas ambition with best mate. At first, all goes well. But then the father unexpectedly dies, leaving his children scrambling for a purpose. Meanwhile, Louis fathers a child with a woman called Helene (Mathilde Weil), but he dumps her in favour of another lady called Laure (Asma Messaoudene) before the baby is even born. But Pieter is there to pick up the pieces: he immediately starts a relationship with Helene and takes over the father role. Louis isn’t jealous. In fact, the unorthodox family structure seems to bring the two old friends closer together. At one point Louis asks his best mate: “how is my son doing?”

While the males benefit from a solid narrative arc, the females remain mostly flat and secondary. Their motivations and desires are never allowed to burgeon, except perhaps for their commitment to the travelling show. Another problem is that The Plough never rescues the charm and the magic of the puppets. The puppet shows are lacklustre, and they are not captured in any particularly elegant, vibrant and innovative way. Both the film plot and the puppet stories plod heavily forward without a clear sense as purpose. At time the script is as inanimate as the dolls. What was intended a celebration of an old tradition feels more like its burial.

The only truly remarkable performance is the one of Bergé as the headstrong and yet kind grandmother with a passion for both marionettes and Communism (her devotion to the ideology is such that she was apostatised – ie debaptised – as a young woman). Her grandchildren love and admire her. She is the true anchor of the family.

The Plough is a real family affair. A banal and uncompromising one. The father character is a stand-in for the 74-year-old French director, who was once associated with the Nouvelle Vague. I certainly don’t wish the same fate upon him. I wish Garrel a long life and a long career, with many films to come. But I also wish his next film is a little less esoteric and more relatable.

Philippe Garrel’s 30th feature film premiered in the Official Competition of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival.

The Salt of Tears (Le Sel des Larmes)

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QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

The young and charming Luc (first-time actor Logann Antuofermo) is visiting Paris in order to take an exam for a local joinery school. He lives with his much older father (the veteran André Wilms) in an unnamed rural town. Upon arriving in the French capital, the meets the naive Djemila (Oulaya Amamra) at the bus stop. They spend some time together and fall madly in love with each other. The few hours that they spend together wiull be carved in their memories forever. But Luc has soon to return home, and he has to wait months for the exam results.

Back home, Luc encounters Geneviève (Louise Chevillotte), a lover from six years earlier who had moved to a different town. The two immediately begin an intense relationship. His heart is split between the two women. He chooses the more convenient relationship with Geneviève, unaware that he would be soon accepted into the joinery school and have to move to Paris. He simply fails to turn up at the hotel that he booked himself when Djemila shows up for an intended reunion. But that won’t be his last gesture of “cowardice” (a word he uses himself in order to describe his questionable behaviour).

Geneviève reveals that she’s pregnant shortly before Luc departs to Paris, infuriating the gorgeous garçon. In Paris, Luc’s more candid and ingenuous side is quickly wiped out by the hedonistic lifestyle. He makes friends, goes out to clubs and brothels. He soon finds out that not all females are vulnerable and easily manipulated. The realisation of his own frailties is both painful cruel. Could it be that his feelings for Djemila and Geneviève were his only experiences of real love?

This is indeed a banal and ordinary tale, in the hands of an extraordinary director. The story is both palpable and heart-wrenching. It’s impossible not to be moved by the grief-stricken Djemila and Geneviève, and not to laugh at ironic surprises that life has in store for the fallible yet irresistible Luc. All filmed in black and white, in Carrel’s frugal and plain style, which remains as Truffaut-esque as ever. Hardly innovative, yet entirely auspicious.

There is only one element of The Salt of Tears that’s a little disconnected from reality. Despite being set in 2019, technology is almost entirely absent in the film. Lovers never exchange an email or even their telephone numbers. Meetings are arranged verbally, and there’s not a single electronic message exchanged. That’s perhaps because the 72-year-old director Garrel wrote the script himself, and he’s not entirely in touch with the reality of young people. A little peculiar, but it won’t prevent you from engaging with this profoundly frank and human story.

The Salt of Tears has just premiered at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, and it’s in Competition for the much coveted Golden Bear. A viable contender.

Lover for a Day (L’Amant d’un Jour)

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Featured on the main slate of the 55th New York Film Festival and winning the Composers’ Prize at Cannes last year, Philippe Garrel’s Lover for a Day offers a contemplative examination of love, anguish, lust and sexual autonomy. Casting his daughter Ester Garrel as Jeanne- a 23-year-old heartbroken after breaking up with her boyfriend Mateo (Paul Toucang) – who consequently decides to temporarily live with her dad (Eric Caravaca). Garrel’s monochrome feature is a piece of artistry upon the very nature of love. Expressive of the greatest poems and literature on the topic, it is a sophisticated entrée into exploring the fragilities of l’amour.

Recently seen on screen in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name (2017), Ester Garrel’s Jeanne is initially a figure of pain; physically awash with frightening moments of agony. Again adopting the ethos of working with his family members, exemplarily with his father Maurice in Liberté, la Nuit (1983), and his son Louis Garrel in Regular Lover (2005), the lineage of placing those closest to him in front of the camera inevitably imbues the context surrounding her character with a psychological Freudian quality. Still, predating her entrance into the narrative, we firstly see Ariane (Louise Chevillotte) experience a deep sexual moment, against a white toilet wall, with Jeanne’s father, Gilles. It is a moment of pure passion in a public space, leaving one initially in a state of intrigue as to whether or not their relationship is one of lust or a deep spiritual understanding.

On her arrival, Jeanne, claims Ariane as ‘less beautiful’ than her mother amidst her pain. Extending the historicity of alluring French female actors, particularly Chevillotte, a newcomer to the big screen, holds every take with a captivating edge; drawing you closer and closer to her attractive freckled face. Garrel too, in monochrome, attracts the camera to hold on her frequently anguished complexation. Building a relationship henceforth from her residence at her father’s place, the two women allow their lives and secrets to become entwined with one another, away from the knowledge of Gilles. Continually, Ariane is allowed to express her youthful sexual urges to a level of secrecy, Gilles openly adopting the ethos of ‘what you do not know, will never hurt you.’- a very blase European approach to love.

A juxtaposition of each other yet still the same age, Jeanne and Ariane depict two sides of love that are the pinnacle and nadir of the profound emotion. Languid and sexually consuming in her relationship with Gilles, Ariane does not see the age difference between the two as a cause of concern. Further, she is a woman of independence and operates to a level of autonomy that is of verisimilitude. Yet, in light of recent allegations against Woody Allen et al, Lover for a Day, without its nuanced characters and philosophical edge, would be susceptible to backlashes and outright criticism. Nonetheless, at its uttermost core, Garrel and co portray the greatest human emotion of all with a softening touch, achieved through exquisite moments of dialogue, written partly by Philippe’s wife, Caroline Deruas-Garrel.

Surveying the negative aspects of being in a comfortable relationship, Jeanne claims that ‘At least, in solitude, you battle the cold’. Akin to any romantic line of Shakespeare, the solace of Milton’s writing or the lyrical dizzy heights of love in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, it’s a statement in the screenplay which encapsulates the insightfully articulate reflections on love Lover for a Day holds inherent through the narrative, performance and cinematic language.

Lover for a Day is out in cinemas from Friday, January 19th.