Mathieu Amalric signs the opening of BRIFF by a poignant feature film on the separation and tangled memory from the past to the present. The first sequence opens on a mother in distress. Clarisse tries, alone, to trace her memories in a simili part of Memory with photos of Polaroid, remains of instant happiness and today in crumbs. Like this game for children, this melancholic film takes us into a memorial memorized, filmed and mounted with intelligence, while a mother abandons the family home for the road.
From theatre to seventh art
Mathieu Amalric thus inaugurates this session of the BRIFF 2021 after two years of pandemic absence, two long years that end up with the roaring voice of an actor and director who did not hide his emotion to present his film to the public. Hold me tight is an intimate project, as Mathieu Amalric entrusted to us during our exchange at the end of the screening. She's a French playwright and friend, Claudine Galea, who gave him this writing project to taste unfinished, because never put on stage. It was therefore up to the director to use the image in the service of the theatre, so that the play now finds a way out by the seventh art.
So we follow a family in moments of life that are shattered by memories drowned between past and present. A subtle montage connects each of the fragments, which combine lost time with the test of memory, itself fantasized by the ribs of each other. The opening scene shows us Clarisse leaving in the middle of the night the family home, leaving her two children and her husband Marc. The couple Vicky Krieps – Arieh Worthalter deliver us a touching and fair performance. A scene of encounter in discotheque and another of tenderness immediately recall a past era, hit with full whip by a tragic event and spun throughout the work. Although both actors are only physically reunited twice, the bond is never broken...
Memory in the skin
Despite the original support of the play, Mathieu Amalric claims a collective work thanks to the mobilization of his « troop »as a tribute to the theatre. Filming was like an artistic residence, which brought together and brought together artists. With a human dimension, it lasted almost two years, three different seasons, allowing the actors to find the same places, immediately marked by new memories of the previous ones. rushes. Improvisations thus punctuated the film during an original shooting in several high mountain seasons, where the team discovered the lines of the script at three o'clock in the morning, adjusted during the night by a Mathieu Amalric noctambule.
The script was in perpetual reshuffle, while the director, intoxicated by writing, made the parquet grin over the dormitories of the actors. The latter waited for final instructions for the scenes that would be filmed the same morning! « A momentum » congratulated by actor Arieh Worthalter. A sign of this artistic osmosis, Vicky Krieps also gave instructions to his companion spontaneously, through an earpiece, during a moving scene of a dialogue between absent and dear. Crying for authenticity, the latter gives to see a formidable impossible exchange, where desire meets the impasse of life. A dialogue of ventriloquis, where one no longer knows how to distinguish the puppet from the puppeteer.
« It is not because it is written that the shooting must be the coloring of the script. And if something has been written, it means something else is possible. »
Intrigue gradually binds together the pieces of the puzzle. A bold assembly, which seeks its way to avoid at all costs a climax known in advance and in order to prevent falling into the trap of madness, scheme as easy as predictable. The director also entrusted us with Off have deleted a scene of madness, which would have harmed the rest of the film. What if dementia was enough to justify each of the previous scenes? The viewer is at the same level as the narrator, i.e. between denial and the test of reality. However, if the montage proceeds with intelligence, just like the play d'actor that flies, the rhythm is somewhat undermined by this torrent of uninterrupted memories and thrown full whisk to the spectator, who probably integrates the score too quickly. Do not look for a drama, the outcome of which would be revealed at the last moment: Hold me tight Is anything else.
A contrario, Mathieu Amalric takes the risky bet to propose elements of the outcome very early in the narrative, from 28 minutes to be exact! « It was not a matter of filming a cross path or a mater dolorosa ». Hold me tight is not really tragic but melancholy, abolishing the border between past and present. « There was no need for a final revelation, so that the person making the film would not advance the viewer » Explains the director. « That's what Clarisse says. That's where I'm very "clarissian"... Clarisse is a character of Man without qualities», he added as an index.
« There's nobody behind the screen and you believed it... You believed it, so it's true. Clarisse is the projectionist! »
Hold me tight is constantly carried by classical music, which is omnipresent from the Letter to Beethoven's Elise or Mozart. Rameau's same melody will serve as many variations that accompany the narrative and momentum of the film. This theme, which constantly returns, recalls the maternal obsession and the exhaustion that accompanies it. The piano is the central element, which binds mother and daughter with memories. Paradoxically, the stringed instrument reminded the director of his childhood, where children are pushed to become young wonders, even if they disgust them fine music. As such, the term melodrama is probably the most appropriate to qualify this melancholic romance. Hold me tight is an intimate feature film, from its origin to its realization and to the choice of actors. Mathieu Amalric himself recognizes himself in the performance of Arieh Worthalter (age in addition), he confesses to the public. If the work would have gained power by beating the measure at a higher rate, Hold me tight proposes a variation of original and declined mourning, to the nearest note, until exhaustion.
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