Synopsis
A collaboration between the late writer and filmmaker Bernard Queysanne based on the original text by Georges Perec, duly calibrated by both authors. A common reflection and a very concerted purpose, here, generate an innovative, singular work, out of time. Here is the libretto - for the film is constructed like a musical score, in several movements: a student questions his activities and projects in order to voluntarily immerse himself in a kind of hibernation. For several months, he lives outside of time, outside of the world, until the limits and dangers of this radical experience appear, and painfully, he regains his footing in the land of the living. A story that induces an important formal and sonic research, in the service of the idea of the "infra-ordinary," dear to Perec, that underlies it.
A word from Tënk
One of the most striking things about this film is the beauty of the images and the soundtrack composed of the sounds of the city (and the voice of Ludmila Mikaël), where inside and outside are dizzyingly intertwined and we lose all sense of time and space. We marvel at the ability of Perec (here with Bernard Queysanne) in every book and film to capture a moment, the atmosphere and details that characterise it, the objects and the words that colour it. We’re astounded each time by the many affinities between Perec and Jean Eustache – The Man who Sleeps so clearly contemporary with Eustache’s La Maman et la Putain. It also brings to mind the work of his contemporaries Alain Cavalier and Marguerite Duras. This film is a strange invitation on a journey – an immobile, hypnotic journey during which we sleepwalk and may well come across our double.
Fabien David
Programmer at Cinéma Le Bourguet in Forcalquier
