“Love exists”
Poverty and an indifferent social order are also key themes in writer-director Maurice Pialat’s documentary “Love exists” Begun in 1961, this is the most accomplished and influential work in the series. Starting from the banal banality of bustling city streets, crowds, trains, platforms, buses, and the cold frustration of congested roads, Pialat tells an autobiographical story (written by Jean-Loup Reynold dubbing), which amounts to a long-suppressed cry of rage. He describes growing up in working-class Paris, poor but with a vibrant public life (open-air dances, cinemas) and closeness to nature. What he now discovers is not just economic deprivation, but hopeless neglect and a cultural vacuum in which boredom fuels violence. Large housing projects, which he likens to concentration camps, impose social segregation, while the small private homes that have sprung up in the area both exacerbate segregation and represent trivial comforts in a delusional denial of their surroundings; some are right next to airports, Airplane mode is deafening. With the indignation of a journalist, Pialat shows the plight of migrant laborers huddled in fire traps in shantytowns close to posh Parisian neighborhoods. He uses statistics to document inequalities such as lack of educational opportunity, but as the title suggests, the suffering he lists is as much sociological as it is philosophical: it is a study of existential suffering, from being A childhood of deprivation to a numb adulthood to retirement. In the shadow of death. Visually, his lament is amplified by candidly confrontational and stylistically probing images that match Antonioni’s performance in architectural diagnosis and prefigure Godard’s “Alfa City” in techno-futurism. in melancholy.
“Jenny”
If love existed in such an environment, it would be a miracle. Pialat’s 1962 short story film, “Jenny,” Shows two people who came from such stupid circumstances and endured and perpetuated this pain. They are both fascinated by the main character, Evelyne Ker, a single mother and sex worker on the streets of Paris. One of her clients, Claude (Claude Berry, who also wrote the screenplay and eventually became a commercially successful director), is eager to take her out on regular dates and dreams of marriage. Her ex-husband Hubert (Hubert Deschamps), who is also the father of her child, cannot forget Jenny. During his nocturnal wanderings, he has eerily depressive conversations with the sentimental, post-coital Claude, in whom he condemns her and all women. Pialat deftly balances sympathy for these people’s narrow lives with contempt for their moral laziness, giving his film the laconic naturalism and the whiplash sting of Maupassant’s satirical, erotic short stories.
“The Fifteen-Year-Old Widow”
Pialat (who directed the first of his many films, L’Enfance Nue, in 1968) also appears as an actor in “The Fifteen-Year-Old Widow” By Jean Rouch. The film, described in its opening title as “an essay about being a teenager in Paris during the summer of 1964,” is a drama built on a rich documentary foundation. A pioneer of the genre, Rouch played two teenagers in the film, Marie-France de Chabanex and Véronique Duvall, who played two girls (who share the same names as the actors) , grew up in an environment where money was not the issue but money. Nonetheless, this is a vital subject. Both girls live in a luxurious house in an upscale area of Paris, and Rouch, like Pialat in his impoverished suburb, wants to see if love exists. Veronique was raised by a single father, a busy businessman and the more adventurous of the couple. Marie-France is even more melancholy, living with her parents and being frequently seen by her father’s best friend Robert, whom she suspects of having an affair with her mother. The girls are in high school, and they’re dating college boys who also come from wealthy families, who display casual misogyny and a disregard for unquestioned privilege.
The girls’ seemingly monotonous lives are disrupted when Veronique gets drunk and raped at a party. (Rouche did not describe the incident, only hinting at it through a montage of still photos.) When Veronique tells Marie-France what happened, she never uses the word, nor does she indicate that she is the victim , not even anyone did anything wrong. The trauma is also not mentioned in the film, but it is at the heart of the film because in the aftermath, Veronique’s view of her friends, her life, and even herself changes dramatically. Thus, Marie France’s concerns, hopes, and plans were expressed in different ways. Pialat plays a fashion photographer who takes pictures of Veronique and asks her questions about sex and love, triggering a pessimistic view of the adults around her and the future that awaits her. His character is perhaps a stand-in for Rouch, who probed the apparent frivolity of emerging teen culture to explore the discontent it embodied. (His 1962 short story “Punishment,” also airing on OVID.tv, follows a high school girl who, as a social experiment, succumbs to common pick-up routines and soon encounters a city full of male predators .)
“Miss Flora’s plant portrait”
Saving the best for last: The most shocking discovery in the two-disc set is another exploration of women’s lives – romantic, emotional, even metaphysical – this one by a female filmmaker Written and directed by: “Miss Flora’s plant incarnation” Filming began in 1965. The film was directed by Jeanne Barbillon, whose career was unfortunately short-lived, and starred the great Bernadette Lafont, who had starred in Truffaut a short film, and later starred in one of his most unusual films, Gorgeous, A Girl Like Me, and Jean Eustache’s historic The Mother and the Whore. Lafont plays a woman named Flora who recalls the forty-six days she spent living with a French soldier named Charles (Louis Mesoure) in a provincial town. She humbly describes a story of pain and frustration as Charles was on duty most of the day and even at night, leaving her with no money for even simple pleasures, controlling her household expenses tyrannically and otherwise being either critical or Ignore her. Papillon (collaborating with cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who revolutionized the craft of filmmaking with Breathless) captures small-scale incompatibility and large-scale despair in a series of wry vignettes The lighthearted tragedy thus produces a wonderful effect, a comic mask for unspeakable horror. I can’t keep track of what happened to Babylon: she made another short film the same year, then a TV movie in 1984, and apparently, that was it. Yet “Miss Flora” is the work of a filmmaker whose art and ideas are on par with any in Braunberg’s esteemed circle. The film’s release is both a cause for celebration and a confusing and painful historical regret. ❖
