The first time I watched this film, I was thrown for a loop, completely destabilized by the absence of the narrative signposts on which I typically rely. We experience this movie like a dream—Fellini couldn’t have done it better—moving from one state to another with no connection between them. As Jacques Aumont aptly put it, “nothing, absolutely nothing, is provided from an analytical perspective.” One must simply accept that this film will throw you off balance, and try not to parse the connections between the long still shot of a photograph of Cézanne painting his Mont Sainte-Victoire and the scene of a borderline-overacted Empedocles play in German, or the clip from Jean Renoir’s Madame Bovary. As an experience, it’s the ultimate mirror text: art upon art. The connecting thread in Cézanne – Dialogue Avec Joachim Gasquet is the nearly uninterrupted stream of words that flow through time and the persistence of imagery, as in a dream.
 

Marie-Odile Demay
Transmedia producer and creator