The irreverent vitality of “About Joan”

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It is no longer the usual wave that hits cinemas every Wednesday, harming cinemas and films (and spectators and cinema), it is a tsunami. This Wednesday, September 14th, no less than 21 new films have been released on French screens.

Among them, in addition to two truly individual proposals in relation to reality, the imaginary and the present, are important works threatened with marginalization, Babi Yar. Context by Sergei LoznitsaAnd See you Friday, Robinson By Mitra Farahaniwe find a whole group of films called rather entertainment (French) or author (Portuguese, French, Romanian, Argentinian, Ukrainian …), without forgetting the variety of documentariesAmerican horror comedy British animated film.

In the midst of all this, arrivals have doubled due to the absence of a Hollywood blockbuster this week — nothing on the horizon in this pre-October, romcom. Heaven ticket And the movie superheroes Black Adam—it shows a film that is unexpected, in its tone and kind of gritty in its way of always being a notch above, or next to, what it promised or the class to which it seemed to belong.

Between mystery and wink, the opening plans forAbout Joannein which the lead Isabelle Huppert addresses the camera in the foreground as Belmondo in to the last breathDraw a territory, a little hostile, little heir to the history of modern cinema. Haunted by Uncertain Presence and Welcoming Ghosts, second feature film Lauren Lariviere Conjures hopscotch to play and move around.

This hopscotch boxes tentatively, the film juggling between three periods in the life of Joan, a teenage girl in Ireland, a successful publisher who accompanies an apparent literary genius. Demolition The scene echoed Stone The alternative is in Berlin, and finally a mature woman who has taken refuge in an old family home in the French countryside.

Young Joan (Freya Mavor) and her lover, an Irish pickpocket (Ina Hardwicke). | tall and short

These leaps, which are more like sliding steps, are not only between eras, but also in the moods that govern each situation, during the meetings of the main character (Freya Mavor for the little girl, Isabelle Huppert for the other two eras) with the three characters who marked his life: his childhood sweetheart, His son Nathan, German writer.

Echoes and spirituality

These three signs can resonate in the attentive ear with cinemaArnaud Desplechinwhich is undoubtedly the most explicit reference to the spirit that guides the course of the film, beyond explicit quotations such as those of pickpocketing by Robert BrysonOr, above all, the repetition of this central theme of French cinema which is the family home – and what we ought to do with it.

About Joanne Built on a meticulous script, interpreted by excellent actors (Swan Arlaud, Lars Edinger) and an actress we no longer know how to say is a genius, Isabelle Huppert. All this is not enough, it was not enough to make a good movie.

Joan who tries to control Tim, a punk writer (Lars Edinger), while he seduces her. | tall 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 the singular phenomenon of doubling, on the fringes of spirituality: doubling the way you About Joanne It is dramatization and the way of life of the woman whose story he tells. A movie that looks like its main character.

I respect anyone

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

And it is precisely this regained freedom that is at stake in Joan’s journey, what sets her and keeps her in motion, an implacable assertion where morality, legality, good habits, psychology, and other possessions (including cinematography) have hardly any space.

He did not agitate in this apologie of transgression, but in fact, by realization as he recited, and by his interprétation, by accumulating the flux of life without the juger, the same quelque system whatever.

It will be a matter of respecting the character as a person rather than as a model or as a species. Whoever asks the question of looking for rewards in production will see that it is far from repetitive.

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

Film reviews of Jean-Michel Frodon can be found here in the program “Cultural Connections” Written by Taoufik Hakim, Sundays from 3 pm to 4 pm in France Culture.