Synopsis
Mathieu loves plants and trees. This is expressed throughout his daily life: in high school, at work, at home. But from this very concrete passion, he develops a metaphor of his relationship to authority. The film follows this allegorical quest in which to become a tree means to be authoritative.
A word from Tënk
Mathieu trembles when he speaks. He touches a branch and we swear we can almost see the sap flow towards him to nourish his body. His small, pointed face, his worried expression, his wild gestures—a little creature chased into a landscape that doesn’t suit him. Despite parents who don’t understand him, the somber halls at school and the grey streets of Paris, sometimes a little spark appears. When Mathieu throws himself into uprooting a plant, when he holds out his herbarium with fingers that are not quite a child’s, but not yet an adult’s, when he starts to learn about his surroundings and is amazed by the many forms that nature can take… Mathieu is a trembling figure in a world so still it might as well be dead. His expansive sensitivity is looking for a safe place to land, grow and take the space it needs. For the moment, he is burning branches from the Bois de Boulogne. The fire is far from going out.
Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk’s Artistic Director
