After A Violent Life, Thierry de Peretti, the island filmmaker, takes up the theme of Corsican independence and the whirlwind of violence that surrounds it. The whole covered with deep reflection on photography, recently presented at the GIFF, is one of the most exciting films of the year. An immanquable, with a pinzutu critique... In his image Corse, to life, to death
Antonia (
Clara-Maria Laredo) died brutally in a car accident. One of his friends – Simon (Marc-Antonu Mozziconacci) – remembers his story. In particular, his dislikes with Pascal (Louis Starace) and his friendships with ardent Corsican independents, causing him to fright with the blows that shook the island between the 1980s and the early 2000s. She will record this double decade through her camera, both during her job in Corse Matin and on her free time.Real Filmmaker. They are little, in this small circle, and
Thierry de Peretti is certainly part of it. He's not at his test, but Inquest into a state scandal (his penultimate film as of date) had been able to mark the minds. He will repeat with In his image by entering in the theme of photography (female), decidedly well present on our screens in 2024. The commonplace latest Civil War Lee Miller , the theme returns tirelessly. No doubt about this thematic triois by far the most exciting feature film... It could be one of the most important films of the year! In his image Film without present
What strikes the viewing of
This is how much the film is consumed before even appearing on the screen. Everything – love, hope, struggle – dissipates even before it really exists. When Simon's Corsican accent narrates events in voice-off, they already belong to the past, to the inevitable alteration, to the annihilation, to the oblivion. And even the narrative of the film begins with the violent eruption of death, before attaching to reconstructing the past that it has just obliterated. Time destroys everything, wrote Noah in giant letters in a box of paper In his imageIrreversible. De Peretti doesn't need to write it, he's filming it.« Irreversible »Gaspar Noe
described from inside the "micro-death experience" exhibited by Roland Barthes in his book In his image The Clear House . This death, she offers it to everything goes: to her loves, to her friends, to her parents, and this until the inacceptable violence of her stays in Yugoslavia.... Cette mort, elle l’offre à tout va : à ses amours, à ses amis, à ses parents, et ce jusqu’à l’inacceptable violence de ses séjours en Yougoslavie…
De Peretti, on the other hand, will have ceased to shift his action. To focus on the front (and the strength of the potentiality) or the next (when dust already falls). Before a sex scene, when two bodies drowned in a morning light seek under the voyeurist click of the trigger. After a murder, while the corpse already cools and the blood sheaves freeze. A mismatch often filmed in long plans-sequences, which places the director as a port-à-false of the work of photographer d'Antonia: she, who freezes everything, he, who uses the only possible modality of representation of a pure present.
This work of the sequence plan is combined with a refined choice of the original tape, exemplaryly during a long sequence where Pascal, on the phone, lets himself be photographed by Antonia. Whilein extenso plays the hymn of Black Berrier Hello to you., we see in one scene a fabulous condensation of meanings: first the famous punk song – a magnificent internationalist anthem – which dyes political affections a common conjugal scene, the loving look of Antonia poached through her camera on her spouse, and finally the latter's inattention, visibly more absorbed by his conversation than one guesses related to the independence movement than by the desire of his companion.
A powerful musical choice that nourishes the film and responds to a second sequence where the music takes its full meaning, a little later in the film, in a plan-sequence signing the end of the Serbian part of the feature film. Italian punk Maria Violenza takes over Quannu iu moru ("When I die"), a spectral requiem, vibrating, tinting In his image Antonia is already burning in haste all the films she has captured in Yugoslavia: all this has been useless.
The emotion of the fragile
Let's rewind. This time for another fateful scene, at the very beginning of the film. Antonia chats with her mother on the phone, to cancel a dinner she would have the next day. The conversation warms up, then Antonia loops. Go back to his hotel room. Closes the automatic curtain that drowns at the same time the chamber in the darkness and imposes an intra-diegetic black melt. A single plan to metaphorize on one hand the shutter movement (the one that captures death, we have said), and at the same time announce the tragic fate that awaits Antonia a few scenes further.
And the accuracy of these dialogues between a mother and her daughter, we will find her through the whole feature film. By this cast unknown, In his image feed on their malice, their false steps, to resonate even louder and even more just. A perfect conjugation to give the film its final emotion, shaking a hagard spectator for following the tragic fate of this group of buddies who would almost sway on the side of Trip to the end of hell Cimino.
Anyway, you'll understand, In his image is decidedly a great work and will certainly remain at the Pantheon of the films of this year 2024. If you liked it, do not hesitate to dive into the work from which it is adapted – the eponymous novel of Jerome Ferrari – and discover the rest of Thierry de Peretti's career. It is undoubtedly one of the most interesting active directors of the moment!
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