a 40-year-old who stays inside and watches movies, which is exactly what I did today – but I have a job and a wife and other things going on, and this is all he does. Secluded in Alsace, France, our man seems to have plenty of friends, and he finds a place in Paris with a roommate, so the end is in sight… but until then, he spends his days watching movies on video, creating the visuals of this movie from clips from what he sees, avoiding showing faces so we’re never distracted by recognition of movie stars. No music or sounds from the films, just flat voiceover in French. “I’m like an addict who decides not to quit his habit, but to observe and comment on it.”
Oh no, he’s talking about needing to move but realizing he has too many books and records – so relatable. He complains about his dad, who died while watching Le ciel est à vous. He discusses world events and famous deaths, and what films he was watching at the time. Out of 400ish movies, I recognized only Funeral Parade of Roses and The Maze. It’s first-person depression-recovery diary film set to the cleverly-edited montage, which would be more fun to watch without subtitles if I knew any French. On the minus side, a surprising amount of anti-bird violence in the footage, but on the plus side, Bonnie Prince Billy over the end credits.
According to a Filmmaker interview, the creation of this was more complicated than it appears. In Paris he rewatched every film he’d watched, then again with the editor while grabbing clips, then wrote the narration, then started laying down the clips in spots where they’d fit.
“It was plain, from the beginning, I wouldn’t use material coming from experimental works, animations or documentaries, the idea being to try to explore the polysemous quality shots acquire once they’re discovered out of their original context” – his love of unrecognizable insert shots reminds me of Morgan Fisher’s ().
