Un crime inadmissible, 2 soeurs, le pardon et la confiance, crée dans le premier film de Philippe Claudel, Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, un cocktail peu banal. Le titre donne l'impression d'un film mièvre... le film est boulversant et si loin des clichés. Juliette Fontaine, la soeur ainée de Léa, sort de prison après 15 ans d'incarcération pour avoir tué son fils. Sa soeur, enseignante en littérature à Nancy va l'accueillir chez elle, au sein de sa petite famille, sans lui poser une seule question. Tout au long du film, des secrets se révèlent, de confidences en découvertes. Les voiles se lèvent un à un sur la vie des deux soeurs, leur enfance, leurs parents, leurs enfants et cette prison qui les a si longtemps séparé. C'est un premier film d'une finesse peu commune qui n'a pas peur des silences, de ne pas en dire plus qu'il faut et qui fait confiance à ses acteurs, actrices pour exprimer les non-dits. Kristin Scott Thomas et Elsa Zylberstein, les deux soeurs, sont inoubliables et le personnage de Michel, joué par Laurent Grévill, un ami de Léa, attiré par la mystérieuse Juliette, nous touche aussi. Le cinéaste auteur semble avoir quelques points communs avec ce personnage qui a donné des cours, pendant plusieurs années, en prison. Un film qui marque.

Entrevue avec Philippe Claudel et Elsa Zylbersein

La première pièce de théâtre de Philippe Claudel est un texte très réussis. Elle est basée sur une violente dispute conjugale, au sein de la bourgeoisie parisienne.

L'écriture est simple et la pièce est remarquablement menée.

Het verslag van Brodeck is een parabel op de Shoah waarin het woord ‘jood’ niet één keer voorkomt. Haarscherp schetst Philippe Claudel tot welke gruwelijkheden mensen in staat zijn om zichzelf te redden, maar bovenal laat hij zien hoe liefde de kracht geeft om te volharden, tegen alle angst in. Het verslag van Brodeck is een intense roman, waarin Claudel met zijn gevoelige en beeldende manier van vertellen de kern van het menselijk bestaan raakt. (Tekst op de achterflap)

Voor deze prachtige roman kreeg Philippe Claudel de 'Prix Goncourt des lycéens 2007'.

PERSOONLIJKE MENING.

Ik heb 2 jaar geleden 'Grijze zielen' gelezen van Philippe Claudel . Misschien een nog beklijvender verhaal, dat zich afspeelt tijdens WOI. Hij is een meester-verteller en bezit de gave om op een vlotte en leesbare, bijna poëtische manier, de duistere/grijze diepten van de menselijke ziel op een humane en indringende manier te beschrijven. Voor wie nog niet bekend is met deze getalenteerde Franse schrijver zou ik zeggen - rep je naar de bibliotheek - en probeer de hand te leggen op 'Grijze Zielen' of 'Het verslag van Brodeck'.

Como ocurre con los pintores, los escritores y tantos otros artistas, el creador cinematográfico da también unos pasos hacia atrás en su trabajo para adquirir más perspectiva, calcula la distancia y las dimensiones que tendrá lo que quiere llevar a cabo, y su ojo de creador domina el cuadro entero antes de acercarse otra vez a la cámara  y disponerse  a filmar. Ese "paso hacia atrás"  lo confesó , como tantos otros, el escritor y cineasta francés Philippe Claudel cuando realizó la película "Hace mucho que te quiero". "Imaginé - dijo- la historia de Juliette y Léa , dos hermanas que no han hablado en 15 años. Lo apunté en una libreta y me fui a Laponia. Allí, en invierno, las noches son larguísimas, sólo hay dos horas de luz. Fue un momento mágico para escribir".

Y allí, en las noches de Laponia, Philippe Claudel evocó a Nancy, la ciudad francesa en cuya Universidad había estudiado Literatura e Historia, pero sobre todo puso en pie esa otra pequeña historia de las separaciones y los reencuentros humanos que en la película protagonizan Kristin Scott Thomas y Elsa Zylberstein.

Una vez más la distancia que toman los creadores para enriquecer su perspectiva se revela importante. Es en esas dos horas de luz del invierno de Laponia cuando las calles de hace años, y también los portales, las ventanas y las sombras toman cuerpo. Claudel pensó en las dos actrices y declaró después que era importante que en el film "Juliette lleve los años de cárcel tatuados en la cara, y que Léa tenga el rostro y la silueta de una adolescente que rehusó crecer. Las dos actrices aceptaron esta transformación, lo que les obligó a rodar gran parte de la película sin maquillaje, desnudas. (...) Me fascinan las vidas secretas que convierten a los conocidos en desconocidos. Me encantan las mujeres, me fascina su fuerza, su capacidad de recuperación, de renacer, de apoyarnos y aguantar la vida miserable de los hombres. Tengo la impresión de que los hombres se rinden muy deprisa, pero no las mujeres".

 Eso debía ir pensando el director cinematográfico dando "pasos atrás" en su pasado, en su experiencia y en su tiempo mientras iba escribiendo por las noches aquel guión. Había dos horas de luz únicamente en Laponia pero ellas estaban iluminando todo cuanto había vivido y todo cuanto al fin quería entregar al espectador.

(Imágenes: Kristin Scott Thomas y Elsa Zylberstein en "Il y a longtemps que je t´aime", de Philippe Claudel/ Kristin Scott Thomas, en otra escena del film)

Dat vraagt inderdaad om een woordje uitleg - anders halen jullie zich van alles in het hoofd! Om te beginnen kan hij (de postbode) niet bellen want de brievenbus staat langs de weg (ettelijke meters van het het huis verwijderd!) en die bus is groot genoeg om er van alles in te deponeren...Vorige week bestelde ik 2 boeken bij Proxis: 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' (dat nu op BBC1 te zien is op zondagavond) en 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' - die eigenlijk mijn eerste kennismaking was met de (nu) alom geprezen Engelse schrijver Thomas Hardy. Toentertijd (het Victoriaanse tijdperk) was hij zijn tijd vooruit en moest hij menig manuscript aanpassen omwille van te vooruitstrevend of immoreel!! Ik ben een fan van Thomas Hardy en ik heb bijna al zijn romans in mijn bezit (pocket of paperback). Alleen had ik nog niet 'Tess' en 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'. Dus, nu wel... Blogger dezes is uiteraard héél blij! Alleen, wanneer zal ik dat weer lezen? Maar met de wintermaanden die stilletjesaan dichterbij komen zou dat moeten lukken...

Deze namiddag ga ik naar de bib voor het laatste boek van Philippe Claudel (2008) - Het verslag van Brodeck - wie ooit 'Grijze zielen' las zal begrijpen waarom ik dat boek nu wil lezen. In gans Groot Wevelgem is het boek alleen nog beschikbaar in Moorsele...en tegen 14u zal ik er staan en hopen dat niemand anders het voor mijn neus heeft weggekaapt ;-)

VOOR WIE HET INTERESSEERT!

Ik heb in mijn bibliotheek verschillende klassiekers staan (meestal Engelse waaronder Austen, Brönte, Dickens, Hardy, Trollope) maar ook wel enkele Franse. Voor wie het nodig is omwille van studierichting om een klassieker te lezen en het niet ziet zitten om het boek te kopen kan bij mij terecht. Ik beloof niet dat ik alles in huis heb maar toch wel een en ander. Contacteer mij en dan zien we wel hoe we het praktisch aanpakken. Uiteraard wil ik het uitgeleende boek terug...verkopen doe ik niet en de meeste exemplaren zijn pockets/paperback!

Tempting as it is to feed all my faves from this year 35th Telluride Film Festival through the Zizekian viewfinder, I'm going to refrain from such fanatic behavior and deliver a well-balanced account of what really happened...

HUNGER (Steven McQueen, UK, 2008)

What Firaaq failed to provoke during its Crash-inspired dissection of the ongoing Hindu-Muslim hostilities in India is the intimate kernel of individual suffering made unbearably palpable by the lingering shots of the open sores blistering and sputtering against the fine pale surface of a cadaver waiting to shed his last sign of life. It may be unfair to judge both films (the latter being Hunger) by some arbitrary aesthetic yardstick, since their creators belong to two completely polarized modes of filmmaking, on one hand, we have a famous Bollywood actress turned passionate chronicler of her country's forgotten crimes against itself, and on the other corner, we have a video artist evolving from installation eye-candy to the loose narratives of the European tradition. Director Nandita Das employs shock tactics to externalize the pain of a Hindi housewife haunted by the banshee screams of her Muslim neighbors begging for help, so obviously, her only means of masochistic atonement is to sear her arm with hot cooking oil. Steve McQueen, on the other hand, creeps closer to the essence of horror, building dread not of death's approach, but of apathy wearing away little by little of political conviction, and while many critics has cited the middle portion as being the most political and politicized, the now infamous 20-minute long take of two people conversing whether a hunger strike really achieves or motivates social change, for this reviewer's opinion, where Hunger truly exceeds are the soft-focused texture of surfaces, from fingers probing the rusty iron bars to snow falling on the bloody knuckles of the prison guard, there lie its most gentle moments wrapped around extended tableaus of institutional brutality and frenzy protests (exemplified by the opening credits, the sound of drums are enough to cite historicity without all the cheap signifiers of that Thatcherite era). In the end, neither lofty philosophical conversations nor liberal ideals could rescue the body from flatlining, all that remains is the precious flashback of a childhood lost in the woods, a journey not into a man’s personal beliefs, but his mind right at the precipice of forgetting everything including himself.

I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (Philippe Claudel, France, 2008)

Finally, a high-pedigree film that can be read in no other way than a French maternal melodrama centered on Zizek’s most belabored conceit: the inherent transgression. With drooping baggy eyes and quenched lips, never far away from a lit cigarette, Kristin Scott Thomas fulfills her duty as Oscar bait in another Fresh-off-from-Jail picture starring a strong female lead with a deep dark secret, but even as her most ‘heinous’ sin is carefully spelled out in calm bold letters to an inquisitive employer, we have already succumbed to the face of this pitiful creature that any audible gasp in the audience is a knee-jerk reaction than a sudden transformation of empathy to revulsion. [Spoiler alert] Simply put, Juliette is no cold-hearted murderer, taking a page out of the Euripidean playbook, she’s the modern equivalent of the tragic Medea, sacrificing her terminally-afflicted son in order to save him. Her proof of love is not diminished, but intensified by defying bourgeois notions of morality and confronting the harsh reality of mortality. There’s no better way to showcase pure maternal affection than through mercy killing. The film, in full Zizekian fashion, casts a suspicious eye on this enigmatic mysterious character of Juliette in order to scurry her away into the space of innocence with maximum approval by the audience…of course, how could she, look at this poster child of melancholia. However, we are the not the only spectators of this staged reversal of virtue, for the title points to one of the most banal yet powerful phrases in all of declarative speech, those precious three letter words, I-love-you spoken by a restless spirit: I’ve Love You So Long. Who else but Lea as the true addressee and addresser of this private confession between on the surface, estranged sisters, but symbolically, mother and child surrogates to one another. Is not one of the most poignant gesture of the waiting lover is to write the name of her beloved on each day of the calendar, when physical arrival becomes less important than the promise of remembrance, as time replaces space in all manners of treachery? One could extrapolate that the true monster of this film is the Janus-lingual mother, cast away in her dungeon of a convalescent home for separating the siblings at the first place, her disorienting switch from French to English serves up a cushion of sharp pain for Juliette, who pulls her crucified arms away from this Jane Birkin wannabe. While we could characterize I’ve Loved You So Long as a study on mourning, this intellectual euphemism can’t hold back the flood of what in layman’s term is a full-blooded weepie, you just gotta wait till the doves cry [first].

TULPAN (Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan, 2008)

How can I truly encapsulate the experience of watching Tulpan, a sort of all-knowing homage to Nanook of the North, as if its director’s humble start in documentaries reveal itself through the winding long takes of nomadic kinship set against the desolate plains of Kazakhstan, while the story is languidly propelled by the coming-of-age ambitions of Asa, the returning naval officer in search of a bride. The title of the film refers to ‘tulip,’ the elusive beauty, prized among the scattered inhabitants, but kept offscreen, out of sight, not necessarily out of mind, to drive Asa’s hopes of starting his own enclave of animal husbandry extraordinaires. While the film culminates with a mesmerizing and squirm-inducing birth of a lamb, in which the lack of cuts produces its own brand of realism, not in the order of authenticity to reality, but the other A: aware admiration for the actor’s ability to endure such extraneous demands, a miracle of photography that would raise Bazin from his grave. Thematic consideration aside, what makes the film so pleasurable is the repetition of the disco hit, “Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M, which enters the film only at times of euphoria, when the City, as both urban space and dream realm invoked in the song, promises easy passage into adulthood. Interestingly, the director rejects the hipster flavor of today’s pop tunes for an antiquated sound, an already too late nostalgia, an opportunity missed and never to be recovered, perhaps the inclusion of the folk ballads sung by Asa’s niece is a much required listening session: a counter siren call that lures him back to discover a rite of passage still waiting for him in the present, in his own home, and what the film promotes to be more viable than the hanging gardens of Babylon. Guess which route he chooses?

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD (Kim Ji-Won, Korea, 2008)

Would it be wrong to indulge in a excessively violent action movie while knowing all too well that it consists of thinly-coherent setpieces, like dots on a blank paper with lines connecting to form nothing but more meaningless scribbles? Of course, my description could fit any Hollywood blockbuster from the last five years, including those heading towards the Nicholas Cage’s retirement funds, but what makes The Good, The Bad, and The Weird different from the lot isn’t its intrinsic value as a Kimichi Western, a national appropriation of a bygone genre, resurrected occasionally like its clown-whore cousin, the Musical. Unlike his Asian compatriot Johnnie To, director Kim Ji-won revels in his inconsistency, jumping form one genre to another, and reinvents himself not as an auteur of fresh originality, but as a refiner of form, a distiller of borrowed styles to their most effective luster. As if parodying academic reductions of Korean cinema to nationalist readings of trauma and historicist hoopla, the film accounts for its interpretative posterity by inserting a random scene that takes place in a roadside brothel, even proffering a lecture about the fractured identity of Korea during the 30s. What’s more, we are given everything we expected from the Western, including quiet reflections on what outlaw men dream of, while leaving The Good in the middle of his thought. What does he really want? The film answers this question with the final draw between all the titular leads, their desire is mutual, a chance to challenge each other, whatever hokey bullshit spoken before comes down to a moronic duel-to-the death existence.

Forget about the ‘Melville’ Kim of The Bittersweet Life, or the ‘Kobayashi’ Kim of The Tale of Two Sisters, there’s no dramatic grace or terrifying ambience here, only a topsy-turvy road to perdition, punctuated by perfectly choreographed sequences of deranged shootouts, epic train robberies, and chaotic chases-within-chases. If the Tarantino signature (an oxymoron) is awfully apparent in his recent excursion, it’s only because of their shared passion for Santa Esmeralda, a song that truly blends with the visual spectacles of men running after each other on horses and jeeps, to almost ridiculously laughable duration. I could never articulate my sheer ecstasy in rewatching (infinitely if possible) these scenes of sensory overload, but what I realize in my second viewing is the unique technique Kim brings to Hollywood plot devices that could have called for split-second editing, instead, he decides to keep the camera rolling, extending the moment of gory impact for not only objects on camera, but of the camera itself blown into smithereens. It reminds me of the film’s own vulnerability, its materiality, its mortal inevitability in the filmmaking process rather than only being a omnipresent window to a fictional world. For instance, when the Japanese army starts shooting at all the bandits, our perspective is bound with that of the machine gun, jittering across the frame, but right there, you start to feel the “frames” of the film running every 24 seconds. Like an amusement park thrill ride, The Good, The Bad, and The Weird refuses to play into the dialectic between full form and empty content, we have here a reconciliation of form as content, spectacle as narrative, and a feast even the eyes would think twice about before attending.

Tempting as it is to feed all my faves from this year 35th Telluride Film Festival through the Zizekian viewfinder, I'm going to refrain from such fanatic behavior and deliver a well-balanced account of what really happened...

HUNGER (Steven McQueen, UK, 2008)

What Firaaq failed to provoke during its Crash-inspired dissection of the ongoing Hindu-Muslim hostilities in India is the intimate kernel of individual suffering made unbearably palpable by the lingering shots of the open sores blistering and sputtering against the fine pale surface of a cadaver waiting to shed his last sign of life. It may be unfair to judge both films (the latter being Hunger) by some arbitrary aesthetic yardstick, since their creators belong to two completely polarized modes of filmmaking, on one hand, we have a famous Bollywood actress turned passionate chronicler of her country's forgotten crimes against itself, and on the other corner, we have a video artist evolving from installation eye-candy to the loose narratives of the European tradition. Director Nandita Das employs shock tactics to externalize the pain of a Hindi housewife haunted by the banshee screams of her Muslim neighbors begging for help, so obviously, her only means of masochistic atonement is to sear her arm with hot cooking oil. Steve McQueen, on the other hand, creeps closer to the essence of horror, building dread not of death's approach, but of apathy wearing away little by little of political conviction, and while many critics has cited the middle portion as being the most political and politicized, the now infamous 20-minute long take of two people conversing whether a hunger strike really achieves or motivates social change, for this reviewer's opinion, where Hunger truly exceeds are the soft-focused texture of surfaces, from fingers probing the rusty iron bars to snow falling on the bloody knuckles of the prison guard, there lie its most gentle moments wrapped around extended tableaus of institutional brutality and frenzy protests (exemplified by the opening credits, the sound of drums are enough to cite historicity without all the cheap signifiers of that Thatcherite era). In the end, neither lofty philosophical conversations nor liberal ideals could rescue the body from flatlining, all that remains is the precious flashback of a childhood lost in the woods, a journey not into a man’s personal beliefs, but his mind right at the precipice of forgetting everything including himself.

I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (Philippe Claudel, France, 2008)

Finally, a high-pedigree film that can be read in no other way than a French maternal melodrama centered on Zizek’s most belabored conceit: the inherent transgression. With drooping baggy eyes and quenched lips, never far away from a lit cigarette, Kristin Scott Thomas fulfills her duty as Oscar bait in another Fresh-off-from-Jail picture starring a strong female lead with a deep dark secret, but even as her most ‘heinous’ sin is carefully spelled out in calm bold letters to an inquisitive employer, we have already succumbed to the face of this pitiful creature that any audible gasp in the audience is a knee-jerk reaction than a sudden transformation of empathy to revulsion. [Spoiler alert] Simply put, Juliette is no cold-hearted murderer, taking a page out of the Euripidean playbook, she’s the modern equivalent of the tragic Medea, sacrificing her terminally-afflicted son in order to save him. Her proof of love is not diminished, but intensified by defying bourgeois notions of morality and confronting the harsh reality of mortality. There’s no better way to showcase pure maternal affection than through mercy killing. The film, in full Zizekian fashion, casts a suspicious eye on this enigmatic mysterious character of Juliette in order to scurry her away into the space of innocence with maximum approval by the audience…of course, how could she, look at this poster child of melancholia. However, we are the not the only spectators of this staged reversal of virtue, for the title points to one of the most banal yet powerful phrases in all of declarative speech, those precious three letter words, I-love-you spoken by a restless spirit: I’ve Love You So Long. Who else but Lea as the true addressee and addresser of this private confession between on the surface, estranged sisters, but symbolically, mother and child surrogates to one another. Is not one of the most poignant gesture of the waiting lover is to write the name of her beloved on each day of the calendar, when physical arrival becomes less important than the promise of remembrance, as time replaces space in all manners of treachery? One could extrapolate that the true monster of this film is the Janus-lingual mother, cast away in her dungeon of a convalescent home for separating the siblings at the first place, her disorienting switch from French to English serves up a cushion of sharp pain for Juliette, who pulls her crucified arms away from this Jane Birkin wannabe. While we could characterize I’ve Loved You So Long as a study on mourning, this intellectual euphemism can’t hold back the flood of what in layman’s term is a full-blooded weepie, you just gotta wait till the doves cry [first].

TULPAN (Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan, 2008)

How can I truly encapsulate the experience of watching Tulpan, a sort of all-knowing homage to Nanook of the North, as if its director’s humble start in documentaries reveal itself through the winding long takes of nomadic kinship set against the desolate plains of Kazakhstan, while the story is languidly propelled by the coming-of-age ambitions of Asa, the returning naval officer in search of a bride. The title of the film refers to ‘tulip,’ the elusive beauty, prized among the scattered inhabitants, but kept offscreen, out of sight, not necessarily out of mind, to drive Asa’s hopes of starting his own enclave of animal husbandry extraordinaires. While the film culminates with a mesmerizing and squirm-inducing birth of a lamb, in which the lack of cuts produces its own brand of realism, not in the order of authenticity to reality, but the other A: aware admiration for the actor’s ability to endure such extraneous demands, a miracle of photography that would raise Bazin from his grave. Thematic consideration aside, what makes the film so pleasurable is the repetition of the disco hit, “Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M, which enters the film only at times of euphoria, when the City, as both urban space and dream realm invoked in the song, promises easy passage into adulthood. Interestingly, the director rejects the hipster flavor of today’s pop tunes for an antiquated sound, an already too late nostalgia, an opportunity missed and never to be recovered, perhaps the inclusion of the folk ballads sung by Asa’s niece is a much required listening session: a counter siren call that lures him back to discover a rite of passage still waiting for him in the present, in his own home, and what the film promotes to be more viable than the hanging gardens of Babylon. Guess which route he chooses?

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD (Kim Ji-Won, Korea, 2008)

Would it be wrong to indulge in a excessively violent action movie while knowing all too well that it consists of thinly-coherent setpieces, like dots on a blank paper with lines connecting to form nothing but more meaningless scribbles? Of course, my description could fit any Hollywood blockbuster from the last five years, including those heading towards the Nicholas Cage’s retirement funds, but what makes The Good, The Bad, and The Weird different from the lot isn’t its intrinsic value as a Kimichi Western, a national appropriation of a bygone genre, resurrected occasionally like its clown-whore cousin, the Musical. Unlike his Asian compatriot Johnnie To, director Kim Ji-won revels in his inconsistency, jumping form one genre to another, and reinvents himself not as an auteur of fresh originality, but as a refiner of form, a distiller of borrowed styles to their most effective luster. As if parodying academic reductions of Korean cinema to nationalist readings of trauma and historicist hoopla, the film accounts for its interpretative posterity by inserting a random scene that takes place in a roadside brothel, even proffering a lecture about the fractured identity of Korea during the 30s. What’s more, we are given everything we expected from the Western, including quiet reflections on what outlaw men dream of, while leaving The Good in the middle of his thought. What does he really want? The film answers this question with the final draw between all the titular leads, their desire is mutual, a chance to challenge each other, whatever hokey bullshit spoken before comes down to a moronic duel-to-the death existence.

Forget about the ‘Melville’ Kim of The Bittersweet Life, or the ‘Kobayashi’ Kim of The Tale of Two Sisters, there’s no dramatic grace or terrifying ambience here, only a topsy-turvy road to perdition, punctuated by perfectly choreographed sequences of deranged shootouts, epic train robberies, and chaotic chases-within-chases. If the Tarantino signature (an oxymoron) is awfully apparent in his recent excursion, it’s only because of their shared passion for Santa Esmeralda, a song that truly blends with the visual spectacles of men running after each other on horses and jeeps, to almost ridiculously laughable duration. I could never articulate my sheer ecstasy in rewatching (infinitely if possible) these scenes of sensory overload, but what I realize in my second viewing is the unique technique Kim brings to Hollywood plot devices that could have called for split-second editing, instead, he decides to keep the camera rolling, extending the moment of gory impact for not only objects on camera, but of the camera itself blown into smithereens. It reminds me of the film’s own vulnerability, its materiality, its mortal inevitability in the filmmaking process rather than only being a omnipresent window to a fictional world. For instance, when the Japanese army starts shooting at all the bandits, our perspective is bound with that of the machine gun, jittering across the frame, but right there, you start to feel the “frames” of the film running every 24 seconds. Like an amusement park thrill ride, The Good, The Bad, and The Weird refuses to play into the dialectic between full form and empty content, we have here a reconciliation of form as content, spectacle as narrative, and a feast even the eyes would think twice about before attending.

Autor: Philippe Claudel / rororo Verlag

Sehr feinfühlig berichtet der Autor von einem alten Mann aus einem fernen Land. Ganz alleine mit seiner Enkelin kommt er mit einem Schiff in eine fremde Heimat.

Er kann die Sprache nicht. Seine Gedanken gehen oft in die ferne Heimat. In dem ihm fremden Land lernt er einen anderen älteren Herrn kennen. Beide Männer verstehen sich ohne Worte, denn keiner spricht die Sprache des Anderen.

Ein kleines feines Taschenbuch habe ich mir da gekauft. Es berührt mich sehr. Sehr einfühlsam geschrieben ist es. Das Thema des Buches macht mich ganz nachdenklich.

Película francesa con protagonista británica, la consideramos como una oportunidad de volver a disfrutar de las bondades interpretativas de Kristin Scott Thomas, tras unos años en los que sus trabajos para la gran pantalla no han destacado especialmente.

La película es francesa, siendo Francia el país donde reside la actriz protagonista a pesar de ser inglesa, y está dirigida por Philippe Claudel, realizador desconocido por mí hasta la fecha, que parece haber destacado hasta el momento más como escritor que como cineasta. Firma también el guion del filme.

La historia nos narra el reencuentro de dos hermanas. Una la mayor, interpretada por la mencionada protagonista, acaba de cumplir 15 años de condena por un asesinato, que descubriremos tiene unas connotaciones terribles, muy duras. La otra, interpretada por Elsa Zylberstein, es bastante más joven puesto que era todavía una niña o al menos una joven adolescente cuando la mayor, ya casada y madre, cometió el asesinato. La recibe en su casa de la capital histórica de Lorena, Nancy, donde comenzará un difícil proceso de readtación de una mujer, que parece ajena al mundo que le rodea, prisionera de sus fantasmas interiores.

La peso de la película descansa sobre la excelente interpretación de ambas actrices. Constántemente deambulamos entre la instrospección, la desconfianza o el difícil convivir con su conciencia de la hermana mayor, y el amor incondicional de su hermana menor, reflejado en el título del filme, pese a las terribles circunstancias del crimen que cometió. A ambas les rodean una serie de personajes cotidianos que ponen su grano de arena al desarrollo de la relación de ambas mujeres así como del despertar de la protagonista.

En general está bastante bien. Quizá sobre alguna de las historias paralelas; no sé todavía muy bien donde quiere ir la relación con el policía que se quiere ir al Orinocco. Pero en general, todo está bastante equilibrado. Poco a poco vamos descubriendo que hay cosas que no se nos están contando, y cuando nos enteramos de ellas, podemos terminar de entender a los personajes. Especialmente a la exconvicta protagonista.

Particularmente recomendaré esta película. Salvo a los que va a comer palomitas al cine, a los que recomendaré que se queden en su casa... siempre. Es una historia pequeña pero intensa, donde las personas más que los personajes tienen el protagonismo. Tiene el lastre de los mediocres doblajes que sufre habitualmente el cine francés... pero qué se le va a hacer. Yo le pongo un siete, con la misma nota en la dirección, y un ocho en la interpretación, por el excelente trabajo de ambas actrices.

La foto de hoy, curioso dominó formado por las traviesas a la espera de ser colocadas en la línea del Canfranc.

(Canon EOS 40D; EF 24-105/4L IS USM)

'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime' és la primera pel·lícula de Philippe Claudel, un desconegut ací però relativament famós a França com a escriptor i guionista de series de televisió. I caram ! quin tros de pel·lícula que ens ha fet en Philippe.....

'Hace mucho que te quiero' és, sense massa esforç per part dels traductors, el títol de la pel·lícula estrenada en aquest costat dels Pirineus. 115 min d'una dura història que passen volant, tant de pressa que no tens ni temps de mocar-te, fent veure que estàs constipat dels aires condicionants del cinema, quan comencen a sortir els títols de crèdit tot amenitzats per una fantàstica cançó de la banda sonora de Jean-Louis Aubert.

En Claudel n'és el guionista i director i certament les dues coses les fa fantàsticament bé. El guió ben bé podria estar tret d'una telenovel·la i això no només no li treu seriositat sinó que molt probablement li ha permès controlar molt bé els diàlegs i situacions que van, a intervals regulars, endinsant-te en un personatge del qual n'estàs enamorat des del primer fotograma, la Kristin Scott Thomas, una dona fantàstica que viu amb intensitat, amb les seves expressions i diàlegs, el personatge de Juliette, una dona que acaba de sortir de la presó on ha passat els seus darrers 15 anys.

És aquesta una història d'amor, de secrets inconfessables, de mentides, d'hipocresia... de la mort. Una historia que ens regala una de les millors interpretacions de la Scott Thomas, que ja ens havia encandilat a 'El juego de los idiotas', 'Secretos de familia', 'Las hermanas Bolena', 'Gosford Park', 'El hombre que susurraba a los caballos' o 'El paciente inglés', i que està ben acompanyada per  Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius i Laurent Grevill. No us vull fer cap  comentari de l'argument, cal deixar-se anar i estar disposat a fer-se amic de la Kristin i anar-vos coneixent.

La pel·lícula, seguint el tòpic, és força lenta, a la francesa, però son els silencis els que l'omplen i li donen un ritme atípic, com deia, regular, com a petits trossos que la fan entenedora i dinàmica per l'espectador. Jo mateix me'n faig creus de que m'hagi agradat tant.

Cal però escollir el moment per veure-la i és molt probable que depenent de com t'enganxi fins i tot podria resultar cursi i terriblement avorrida. A mi es veu que em va enganxar al punt.

Una bona película, ben recomanable, que ens ha de deixar ben tous de cara a la gran expectació de la temporada: 'El Che del Benicio'.

WEB OFICIAL    http://www.ilyalongtempsquejetaime-lefilm.com

Podeu llegir altres crítiques aquí.

Que acabeu de passar bona setmana.

Titulo: Hace Mucho Que Te Quiero

Titulo Original: Il Y A Longtemps Que Je T'aime

Género: Drama

Nacionalidad: Francia, Alemania

Año: 2008

Director: Philippe Claudel

Guion: Philippe Claudel

Reparto: Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot, Jean-Claude Arnaud, Lise Ségur, Mouss, Souad Mouchrik, Catherine Hosmalin, Claire Johnston, Olivier Cruveiller, Lily Rose

Sinopsis: Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) sale en libertad después de pasar quince años en la cárcel. Durante esos quince años no ha tenido ningún contacto con su familia, que la rechazó. Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), su hermana menor, la acoge en su casa de Nancy, donde vive con su marido Luc y dos hijas adoptivas. Debido al largo encarcelamiento de Juliette y a su diferencia de edad, las dos mujeres se sienten como dos extrañas. Pero Léa aceptó dar cobijo a su hermana cuando los servicios sociales se pusieron en contacto con ella.

Al principio, Juliette parece distante, alejada del mundo, ensimismada, pero Léa se esfuerza en hacer que su estancia sea agradable. Su marido Luc no está de acuerdo y sus dos hijas están encantadas de descubrir que tenían una tía desconocida. La casa es grande y siempre está llena de amigos. Michel, compañero de trabajo de Léa y seductor empedernido, y una pareja de inmigrantes, Samir y Kaisha, ayudan a Juliette a volver a una vida normal. Léa descubre cuánto echaba de menos a su hermana y la tremenda deuda que cree tener con ella. Poco a poco, las hermanas recuperan la confianza mutua para superar los secretos y las palabras no pronunciadas que contribuyeron a alejarlas la una de la otra.

"Me encantan las mujeres, me fascina su fuerza, su capacidad de recuperación, de renacer, de apoyarnos y aguantar la vida miserable de los hombres. Tengo la impresión de que los hombres se rinden muy deprisa, pero no las mujeres"

Philippe Claudel, Director de Hace mucho que te quiero.

Philippe Claudel, famoso escritor de novelas galardonado con numerosos premios literarios, presenta su ópera prima como director, Hace mucho que te quiero, protagonizada por Kristin Scott Thomas y Elsa Zylberstein.

Hace mucho que te quiero trata de la fuerza de las mujeres, de su capacidad de irradiar, reconstituirse y renacer. Es una historia sobre los secretos y aislamientos en torno a la relación entre dos hermanas que deben reconstruir lazos emocionales para empezar una nueva vida juntas.

Sinopsis

Después de pasar 15 años en la cárcel sin tener contacto con su familia, Juliette va a vivir a casa de su hermana menor Léa, casada y madre de dos hijas adoptivas. La convivencia no está exenta de dificultades, al contrario, las dos mujeres no se conocen, son dos extrañas. Pero, poco a poco, recuperan la confianza mutua para superar los secretos y las palabras no pronunciadas, que contribuyeron a alejarlas la una de la otra.

Hace mucho que te quiero es la primera película como realizador de Philippe Claudel, aunque ha escrito varios guiones. Sus novelas y relatos han sido galardonados en varias ocasiones: la novela J'abandonne recibió el Premio France Television 2000; la colección de relatos Petites mécaniques, el premio Bourse Goncourt de la Nouvelle 2003, y Les àmes grises (Almas grises), su quinta novela, el prestigioso Premio Renaudot 2003. Ésta última junto a La nieta del señor Linh están traducidas al castellano y publicadas por ediciones Salamandra.

::Mentes Inquietas::

Philippe Claudel is een van de bekendste hedendaagse Franse schrijvers. Zijn laatste boek: Rapport de Brodeck werd bekroond met de Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. Claudel kreeg grote bekendheid met zijn roman Les Ames Grises (2003) en met zijn kleine roman La petite fille de Monsieur Linh (2005). Claudels boeken zijn in meer dan dertig talen vertaald. Met uitgeverij Bezige Bij is overeengekomen dat de vertaling van Le Rapport de Brodeck uitkomt voor 29 maart.

Maar Claudel is ook regisseur. Aan zijn laatste film Il y a longtemps que je t’aime wordt op dit moment de laatste hand gelegd. Met de distributeur van de film en het filmhuis 't Hoogt is geregeld dat deze film wordt vertoond op 29 maart.

Programma - zaterdag 29 maart:

11.00-13.45 filmhuis ‘t Hoogt: vertoning van Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (grote zaal).

14.00–15.00 Academiegebouw (Aula): Maarten van Buuren: Inleiding in het werk van Philippe Claudel

15.00-16.00 Academiegebouw (Aula): Alle Lansu, ciriticus van Het Parool: Over Le Rapport de Brodeck

16.00 – 17.00 Academiegebouw (Aula): Philippe Claudel in gesprek met Maarten van Buuren.

De toegang tot beide evenementen is gratis. Zie ook de uitgebreide informatie op de site van Alliance Française.

Claudel hat in den letzten Jahren eine Reihe Literaturpreise erhalten, sein letzter Roman "Le rapport de Brodeck" gehörte 2007 in Frankreich zu den meistverkauften Romanen und wurde mit dem Preis "Goncourt des lycéens" ausgezeichnet.

Philippe Claudel’s short novel La Petite Fille de Monsieur Linh is a unique and polished love story. The story of true love rising up between two old men who in their loneliness find companionship in the most unlikely of places – a park bench in a noisy French city. Monsieur Linh is a Vietnamese refugee, washed ashore with a wave of other destitute boat people like himself. He is unbelievably sad for the village and homeland he’s left behind, for the son and daughter-in-law who were killed. His only reason to live is the infant granddaughter he has carried with him across the ocean, in the hopes of giving her a new home. 

Monsieur Bark is a widower who spends his days on a bench in the park where his wife worked all her life as a carousel operator. Until the day Monsieur Linh sits down with his granddaughter in his arms and the two men begin a conversation. This is no ordinary conversation because neither man can understand the other – Monsieur Linh doesn’t understand a word of French and Monsieur Bark doesn’t even know what country Monsieur Linh comes from. But a kind of communion forms between them, fashioned out of their mutual loneliness and exclusion. They begin to meet every day. Monsieur Linh brings cigarettes for his new friend. Monsieur Bark gifts a lovely dress for the “little doll” that accompanies the old men on their slow walks around the city.  

Claudel keeps things simple in this novel, deceptively simple. Beneath this beautiful love story are the disturbing ripples of deep trauma. Both men struggle with the demons of their past, the weight of their sorrow and their reaction to the confusing new worlds of widowhood and refugee status. But their friendship, the true love of their improbable alliance, creates a path away from that trauma toward a hopeful future. Or, at the very least, a future made less lonely by the presence of a genuine friend. 

Qui se méritera le prix? Je mise sur Le rapport de Bodeck
que je suis en train de lire...

Voir la liste

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An dieser Stelle: Danke an Tom für die Recherche im französischen Netz!!!

Con tal panorama, el lector se encuentra de entrada con un descenso a los infiernos, con una experiencia de radical soledad, con una novela que justamente parte de un final, de una pérdida.

En una mano Una maleta con un puñado de tierra, en la otra un bebé: pasado y futuro representados en un momento de crisis, en una rotura, en una partida hacia ninguna parte, en una huida hacia adelante.

Al cabo de 6 semanas el barco por fin atraca en el puerto gris de una ciudad desconocida en un país desconocido. Los refugiados son hacinados en pabellones de acogida a la espera de que el gobierno gestione su situación. Días idénticos entre sí. Paciencia. Espera. Incertidumbre.

"La nieta del Señor Lihn" narra las peripecias de un abuelo superviviente en un entorno hostil, en un país cuya lengua no entiende y cuyos hábitos le son ajenos e incomprensibles.

Con esta historia anónima y delicada, Philippe Claudel reclama la atención del lector hacia las consecuencias particulares de los movimientos migratorios generados por conflictos bélicos de todo tipo.

Cuando una persona es arrancada de su entorno y resituada en una nueva realidad, la creación de las rutinas más insignificantes se redimensiona y se convierte en un poderoso mecanismo de defensa que sostienen la identidad de las personas.

Cada día el mismo pequeño paseo, a la misma hora, cada día rezándole a la nieta cuentos e historias que los anclan a la tradición a la que pertenecen por nacimiento y que les confiere sentido en un entorno incomprensible al que ya comienzan a pertenecer por forzoso exilio.

A pesar de la crudeza de la historia, Claudel propone un texto equlibrado, sin aspavientos ni salidas de tono. Un narrador omnisciente claramente alineado con el anciano describe desde una falsa distancia objectiva el día a día del personaje.

Su lenguaje sencillo permite al lector interpretar rápidamente el perfil psicológico de cada uno de los (pocos) personajes que entran en liza en la novela, al tiempo que posiblemente se deje enredar por la trampa que Claudel teje desde la primera línea del libro.

Hay que leer "la nieta del señor Lihn" bien atento a los detalles, bien atento a todo lo que nos llame la atención por ligeramente extraño. Las últimas páginas del texto acogen la clave interpretativa del entramado y sólo a su final la historia se cierra y toma su verdadero sentido.

Una buena novela, rápida y agradable de leer, bien resuelta y que invita a la reflexión.

Apta para todos los públicos.

CLAUDEL, PHILIPPE
LA NIETA DEL SEÑOR LINH
SALAMANDRA | 126 pág.
10,30 euros.

Without further ado, these are the favorites that I think deserve a little extra attention: 

Les Ames Grises – Philippe Claudel. When a little girl is found dead alongside a riverbank in a small French village during WWI, a local policeman sets out to tell her story…and his own. A beautiful and haunting first-person narrative about loss and love. What I particularly enjoyed about this book was its emphasis on the idea that revelation provides catharsis. My review can be found here. 

Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov. The renown of this novel could speak for itself. If not, the sheer brilliance of Nabokov’s fluid and clever prose and his courage to tackle such a thorny subject should definitely overcome any resistant readers. To delve so deeply into Humbert’s warped genius must have been both a frightening and an exhilarating enterprise for Nabokov. Some short mid-read thoughts can be found here.

House of Meetings – Martin Amis. An older Russian man returns to visit the site of his long ago prison internment. His journey offers the distance and reflection for a confession of his life’s crimes along with an eloquent warning about the corruptive qualities of war and violence. This is an ambitious novel, and difficult to meet on its own terms. But its vocation impressed me. Extremely. My review can be found here. 

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson. A novel composed of a series of letters written by a 76 year-old man to his 7 year-old son. The letters are the man’s reflections, explorations, and remaining questions about existence, human folly, love’s mystery, and God’s grace. A slow and deliberate story, more a vehicle for quiet contemplation than furious reading but a work of purposeful and poignant investigation into human nature with all its pitfalls and triumphs. Some of my mid-read thoughts can be found here.