Week 14/2023

Few filmmakers have had such a radical influence on the history of cinema as Robert Bresson, whose uncompromised style has even given rise to its own adjective.

"Bressonian" to the core, Philippe Dumont's Hadewijch is in many ways indebted to the French master. Not only does the clash of the protagonist's excessive devotion with societal norms evoke Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, Dumont's elliptical editing and rigorous framing also earned him the label of Bresson's stylistic heir. After an excruciating mystical search for the presence of God, the protagonist eventually finds spiritual salvation in the world itself. As in Bresson's films, the immanent becomes an expression of the transcendent.

Marguerite Duras does not shy away from calling Bresson the greatest filmmaker of all time. Her admiration for Bresson's modest yet decisive approach to filmmaking informs many aspects of Nathalie Granger, Duras's subdued exploration of domestic space. Contrary to most of Duras's films, which tend to rely on dialogue, the absence of speech in Nathalie Granger lets the space of the house speak for itself. Duras's universe is drenched in a disquieting silence and the bodies that occupy it suggest an uncanny history without revealing it.

Un lac is the film in which Grandrieux's idiosyncratic style reaches its purest form. On the surface, the shaky camera and blurry images seem far removed from Bresson's ascetic and precise mise-en-scène. However, what binds both Frenchmen is their focus on the body and their obsession with the meaning enclosed in bodily gestures. As Grandrieux himself puts it: "the way that he [Bresson] frames hands, body parts, is an aspect of his work that is unbelievably classical and at the same time powerful." Much like Bresson, Grandrieux believes that cinema can generate its own meaning. Rather than producing "filmed theatre," he combines sounds and images to create a new way of writing that does not depend on that which is represented.

Un lac
Philippe Grandrieux, 2008
Un lac , Philippe Grandrieux, 2008, 90’

In the north of France, a family lives in the woods, supported by the eldest son’s logging, despite his frequent, violent epileptic fits. The arrival of a stranger to help the logging sets off tremors that dislocate the delicate balance of family relationships.

EN

 

“The things that guide me are actually very concrete questions, how to film a hand, how to remain on that hand and then how at a certain moment to move to a face, and then I cut, and how do I return to that hand, and then back to the fade, and then back again, and that rhythm gives rise to something in me that allows me to move towards something I don’t really know, to get close to a space where there is an immense desire.”

Philippe Grandrieux1

 

“Instead of the heavy 35mm camera painfully held on the shoulder for Sombre, it’s with a small DV camera (and all that involves) that Grandrieux has shot Un Lac, with a freedom of mastered improvisation which is felt throughout the entire film […]. And thus the camera’s most directly sensitive recording capacity accompanies a will of great abstraction in the way that Grandrieux treats each of the components of the film, in the editing and the sound design, which is entirely constructed, as well as in the decision of lowering the level of light sensitivity, carefully respected from the shooting to the digital colourgrading and the blowup to 35mm. All of this seems to suggest that we are in front of a new way of negotiating the relation between the ‘two biggest trends in cinema, the design-tendency and the recording-tendency’. Serge Daney added ‘two ways of engaging the inhuman in the human’, explaining that it would be ‘in the middle, the ‘scene-tendency’ […] that the inhuman is kept at a distance’.”

Raymond Bellour

  • 1Philippe Grandrieux interviewed by Anne Foti and Sylvain Lécuyer at the Premiere of Un Lac, 2008.

FR

« Je me laisse emporter, fasciné par ce qui ne cesse de transformer devant moi, par ce que je vois si mal et que je désire d’autant plus. Je fouille l'image, m’y enfonce et m’y perds. J’emmène les acteurs avec moi, vers ce que je ne sais plus. Je les guide par la main dans cette obscurité nouvelle, de sorte qu'à leur tour ils ne sachent plus où ils en sont, ce qu'ils font, ce qu'est la scène, ce que l'on tourne. Egaré dans cette nuit obscure où les impressions et les affects ne sont plus séparé, où l’intelligence, comme le recommandait Proust, cède le pas à la sensation, je ressens une sort d'exaltation, j’éprouve le sentiment puissant du film que se fait, malgré moi, au-delà de moi, l) où je ne pouvais pas le pense ni le vouloir, mais juste l’attendre. Alors je vais à nouveau vers eux, la lumière si faible m’aveugle, leurs souffles et au loin le fracas assourdi des avalanches m’enveloppent. J’avance dans mon sommeil. Mes pas chancelants de somnambule me conduisent plus profondément dans la matière du film, et mon cœur battant à l’unisson du sien, à l’unisson de tout ce qui m’entoure, de tout ce qui arrive, je ferme les yeux. Et c’est noir. Et tout continue encore. Tout m’envahit. Je filme. C’est le Réel que je filme. »

Philippe Grandrieux1

  • 1DVD Booklet of Philippe Grandrieux: coffret intégrale des films, 2021.
screening
De Cinema, Antwerp
MORE INFO→ venues and hours
Nathalie Granger
Marguerite Duras, 1972
Nathalie Granger , Marguerite Duras, 1972, 82’

With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman’s day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.

FR

 

« On a parlé de l’inquiétude que provoque le film sur le spectateur. Elle est sans aucun doute de même nature que celle qui découle de toute exploration – désintéressée – d’un lieu, d’un visage, d’un objet. Si vous entrez dans une maison pour aller y chercher une histoire, l’histoire pourra vous inquiéter sans doute, mais pas la maison par elle-même. Si vous entrez dans la maison pour rien, sans être prévenu de quoi que ce soit (comme vous êtes prévenus dans 98 % des films), la maison devient par elle-même et à elle seule, objet d’inquiétude, de fascination. Entrez par hasard n’importe où : n’importe où, c’est terrifiant. »

Marguerite Duras1

 

« Il y a plus de temps à vivre pour cette maison qu’il n'y en a derrière elle, parce que, maintenant, on répare les maisons. On répare les toitures. Elle durera beaucoup plus longtemps. Elle va encore durer des siècles. Et moi, je l’aurai habitée pendant un fragment de temps très bref. Mais, curieusement, ce n’est pas mon histoire que j’ai dite là, puisque je n’ai pas d’histoire. Puisque je suis un écrivain, mais je n’ai pas d’histoire à proprement parler. Je n’ai pas de moteur extérieur à moi. Il y en a très, très peu. À part la vie et la mort, celle de mes proches et de moi, je n’en vois pas. Donc, je ne me suis pas mise dans cette histoire, mais j’ai mis d’autres gens, inventés. »

Marguerite Duras2

 

« Les premiers films de Marguerite Duras étaient marqués par toutes les puissances de la maison, ou de l’ensemble parc-maison, peur et désir, parler et se taire, sortir et rentrer, créer l’événement et l’enfouir, etc. Marguerite Duras était un grand cinéaste de la maison, theme si important dans le cinéma, non seulement parce que les femmes « habitant » les maisons, en tous ces sens, mais parce que les « habitant » les femmes. »

Gilles Deleuze3

  • 1Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Granger suivie de La femme du Gange (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), 95-96.
  • 2Marguerite Duras, La Couleur des Mots: Entretiens avec Dominique Noguez (Benoît Jacob, 2001), 58.
  • 3Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: L'image-temps (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985), 336.
screening
CINEMATEK, Brussels
MORE INFO→ venues and hours
Hadewijch
Bruno Dumont, 2009
Hadewijch , Bruno Dumont, 2009, 105’

A young woman is sent away from a convent as a novice because of her too excessive devotion to Jesus and too ascetic attitude. In her mystical search for spiritual solace, she eventually turns to Islam.

EN

“On a stylistic level, Dumont and Hadewijch can be termed ‘soulmates’ in the light of their attempts to articulate the inexpressible. Dumont’s unrelenting quest for approaching the inexpressible makes mysticism a guiding principle for his vision of cinema. It should be noted, however, that a director uses his medium differently from a writer and it is this difference that constitutes the leeway between poetic mysticism and a transcendental film style. Hadewijch injects her texts with abundant means – lyrical expressions full of passion, resulting into an ineffable union – to counter the sparseness of literature. Conversely, Dumont injects his cinema with sparse means – coldly framed images to withhold psychologically motivated expressions of emotions – as an antidote to cinema as an abundant means.”

Peter Verstraten1

 

“These days I am very interested in mysticism because it goes way beyond philosophy. Mysticism takes us to areas that are beyond questions of reason, beyond speech, and beyond our comprehension of the world. It takes us to an area that is very close to cinema, and I think that cinema is capable of exploring that area and expressing it. That’s why, necessarily, I am attracted to mysticism. At the same time, it’s a complex area. I’m not myself religious – I’m not a believer – but, I do believe in grace and the holy and the sacred. I’m interested in them as human values. I place The Bible alongside Shakespeare, for example; not as a religious work, but as a work of art. The Bible has the definite values of a work of art.”

Bruno Dumont2

FR

« Je voulais faire un film d’amour et j’ai fait un film de guerre. »

Bruno Dumont1

  • 1DVD extra, Hadewijch, 2009.

“The sweetest thing about love is its violence.”

Hadewijch

screening
CINEMATEK, Brussels
MORE INFO→ venues and hours
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