Nicolas Klotz directed documentaries about musicians such as Ravi Shankar, Brad Mehldau or James Carter, and is the author of The Bengali Night and The Sacred Night. Between 1999 and 2006, he directed a “trilogy of modern times”: Paria in 2001, The Wound in 2005 and Heartbeat Detector, released in 2007. Now available on DVD, Paria and The Wound give us a great opportunity to look upon the art of a director, Nicolas Klotz, and a screenwriter, Elisabeth Perceval, whose way to think about their work is as rare as important.
Paria follows the path of two characters, Momo and Victor. Momo –remarkably played by Gérald Thomassin– lives in the streets, while Victor, on the edge of poverty, loses his apartment when he loses his job. Their destinies will come across during the night of the “millennium” which will be celebrated in a social pick-up bus. By a brilliant inversion of the points of view, the opening sequence, shot form the bus, in which the city night is threatening, takes a totally different aspect in the middle of the film. The events take another relief as the outcast have been given a face, taking back their humanity. In the wonderful sequence that follows, Blaise, one of the homeless is taken care of in a refuge where the outcast are healed and washed, far away in the suburbs, away from the good society. Victor and Momo, thanks to love, will find hope in a better future. Filmed in a documentary way, in DV under the cold urban lights, Paria catches the dark side of the city, the space between the spaces, the left-overs, and frees the speech of the outcast the society don’t know what to do with.
Parias too, the foreigners of The Wound are “welcome” in France by the border police, unwanted, considered guilty as they enter in France. Wounded before boarding to be expelled back to her country, Blandine finds a refuge with her husband in a squat where she meets with other people waiting to be transplanted to a country that already decided that they would be rejected. Though built on testimonies from months of inquiry, The Wound never considers its subjects theoretically. Like in Paria, Nicolas Klotz films in close shots, a hand, a movement, the texture of things. The direction is subtle, never ostentatious. By working on the length of the shots, mostly without moving his camera, Nicolas Klotz gives density to the lives of these outcast, filming the margin.
Nicolas Klotz’s two films are available at last on DVD with remarkable special features. The “Dialogues clandestins”, gathers testimonies and elements, which nourished the writing of the films, with participation of Portuguese director Pedro Costa and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. In “Ton doux visage” and “Ton sourire pas enfoui”, the director films his writer talking about the way she works and why she does it, with the desire to catch her moves, her body, her presence. Each DVD includes a booklet with further analysis and interviews and brings light on very interesting elements of these as rare as must-see films.
Francis Chérasse
More information about Paria
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“This film was banned in China, the director and the producer both were forbidden to work for five years. The film tells the story of students during the Tian’anmen events. They grow up until some of them settle in Berlin. It is their journey, their sentimental evolution. It’s a wonderful film with incredible actors, a very moving actress, beautiful. The film was probably banned because of the Chinese youth and Tian’anmen, because of the nude love scenes, because of other things too… There is a way to catch the moment, with the camera on the shoulder, the movements of the bodies, in the intimacy, but also in the crowd scenes, it’s really beautiful. The more the film goes the more moving it is. It’s a little desperate at the end, not about China but about feelings, about the failure of a life. It’s very moving and very cinematographical.”
Acclaimed for his short films then for his breakthrough first feature film The Dreamlife of Angels -double Interpretation Prize for Elodie Bouchez and Natacha Régnier at Cannes Film Festival in 1998 and Cesar Award for Best Film and Best Director in 1999-, Erick Zonca also directed for television The Little Thief in 2000, which was finally released in theatres too given its outstanding qualities. After 10 years of silence he came back on the silver screen in 2008 with Julia, magnificent portrait of a borderline woman in her forties played by the flaming Tilda Swinton.
French fantastic cinema gave birth to a few masterpieces such as the films by Jean Cocteau (The Beauty and the Beast), The Devil’s Envoys by Marcel Carné or The Devil’s Hand by Jacques Tourneur, but the « horror » genre has rarely been exploited in France. A major genre in the United States or in Italian cinema, the horror cinema -made to create fear- has at least given birth in France to a real masterpiece: Eyes Without a Face by Georges Franju, now available at last in a remarkable French DVD edition.
Whether they are used for their poetical view upon the world (The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton, To Kill a Mockingbird by Robert Mulligan, Moonfleet by Fritz Lang) or used to be the victims of a tough world one wants to denounce (Mouchette by Robert Bresson), many films use children as their heroes. Kes, the second film by Ken Loach, is somewhere between this two poles, somewhere between the confrontation with the mysterious and codified adult world and the recreation of the magic of the child look upon the world.
What is most disturbing in UNITED RED ARMY is Wakamatsu’s film does not comply with any rule nor any code and obeys no other system than his: a total liberty of speech and action, which made him produce and direct UNITED RED ARMY the guerrilla way, i.e. by financing the film all by himself, by having his own house blown up for the film purpose, by mortgaging his movie theatre –he owns one in Nagoya–, by supervising production management, editing, through distribution and exhibition in Japan.
“All the cinema is there. It’s a tragic subject, the young delinquents facilities, with many bad guards who, for instance, put electricity in the bars a girl holds, leaving her with a burn in the shape of a cross. It’s dramatic but DeMille adds many comic elements. It always goes from tragic to comic, almost burlesque, with references to Chaplin, like if DeMille said to himself “I will make the most dramatic film and they’ll also have comic moments”. It’s very surprising to see this mix, with an uncommon subject since it’s about the struggle between a girl who runs a very aggressive atheist movement and a boy who is hyper protestant. They also are in love, which complicates the whole thing. There is a romantic touch, quite rare in DeMille’s cinema, and something about the strength of the drawings, the propaganda flyers the atheists place everywhere in the university. There is also a remarkable work on the sets, especially on this very important element of the cinema of these times, the stairs. The stairs of Godless Girl were probably taken from 7th Heaven by Frank Borzage, six-floor spinning stairs -quite old-, there is a great work with the camera during the big fight between atheists and theists. Like many other DeMille’s films it contains different things, sometimes contradictory. It may be DeMille’s best film, with so many different aspects, and more humanity. He took youngsters and let them express, there is a spontaneity you don’t find to this point in his other films.”