The irreverent vitality of “About Joan”

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It’s no longer the usual wave that hits cinemas every Wednesday, hurting movie theaters (and spectators and cinemas), it’s a tsunami. This Wednesday, September 14, no less than 21 new movies released on French screens.

Among them, in addition to two truly individual propositions in relation to reality, fiction and the present, important works threatened by marginalization, Baby yar. Context by Sergey Loznitsa, and See you Friday, Robinson Written by Mitra Farahani, we find a whole range of films called rather entertainment (French) or author (Portuguese, French, Romanian, Argentine, Ukrainian …), not forgetting a variety of documentaries, American horror film, British comedy, Animation movie.

In the midst of all this arrivals, the absence of a Hollywood movie doubled this week — there’s nothing in sight on that side before October, a romcom movie Heaven ticket Superhero movie black AdamFilm appears unexpected, with its tone and kind of gritty in its way of always being a degree above, or next to, what it promised or the category in which it seemed to fall.

Between mystery and wink, the opening plans offrom Junewhere Isabel Hubert’s command addresses the camera in the foreground as Belmondo in to the last breathDraw an area, slightly hostile, and a small heir to the history of modern cinema. Inhabited by Uncertain Presence and Welcome by Ghosts, Second Feature Film Laurent LaRiver It evokes hopscotch to play and move.

The boxes of this hopscotch are temporary, the film circulating between three periods in the life of Joan, a teenage girl in Ireland, a successful publisher who accompanies an ostensible literary genius. destroy He frequented the alternative rock scene in Berlin, and finally a mature woman taking refuge in an old family home in the French countryside.

Young Gwan (Freya Mavor) and her lover Irish Pickpocket (Ena Hardwicke). | high and short

These leaps, which are rather sliding steps, are not only between the ages, but equally in the mood that governs each situation, during the meetings of the main character (Freya Mafor for the little girl, Isabel Hubert for the other two) with the three characters who marked his life: his childhood sweetheart, His son Nathan, a German writer.

Echoes and spirituality

Ces trois mentions pourraient à bon droit éveiller dans une oreille attentive des échos avec le cinéma d’Arnaud Desplechin, qui est sans doute la référence la plus évidente de l’esprit qui guide explicit le commeau del cheminement The pickpocket by Robert BrysonOr, above all, repeating the main theme of French cinema, which is the family home – and what we should do with it.

from June It was built on an accurate screenplay, done by excellent actors (Swann Arlaud, Lars Edinger) and an actress we no longer know how to say is still a genius, Isabel Hubert. All this is not enough, it was not enough to make a good movie.

Joan trying to take control of Tim, a punk writer (Lars Edinger), while he seduces her. | high and short

We don’t know what it is, a “good movie”, we can only notice when it comes. In this case, it is largely due to an individual phenomenon of doubling, on the fringes of spirituality: doubling the way in which from June It is theatrical and the way of life of the woman whose story he tells. The movie is similar to his main character.

respect anyone

Scene after scene, shot after shot, Laurent Larivière finds the possibility of a lightness, a shake that destabilizes situations, providing an unexpected breath for what seems to fall under tradition, or deja-vu.

And this reimposed freedom is precisely what is at stake in Joan’s journey, what sets her and keeps her in motion, a stubborn assertion where morals, legality, good habits, psychology, and other possessions (including cinematography) have hardly any space.

Il ne s’agit pas ici d’une apologie de la transgression, mais d’une façon, par la réalisation comme par le récit, et bien sûr l’interprétation, d’accompagner des flux de vie sans les juger, selon èmelque whatever.

It will be a question of respecting the character as a person and not as a model or a species. Whoever asks the question of looking for equivalents in production will see that it is far from redundant.

This is how what seemed to be a proposition coming from the center often frozen and aligned with French novels step by step creates its own dynamism, poetic and moving.

You can find Jean-Michel Frodon movie reviews In “Cultural Connections” By Toufic Hakim, Sundays from 3pm to 4pm at France Culture.