Léonore Mercier
Via - Film - 2010
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 12
Film
The action takes place in the present time, partly in a piano-bar, during the filming of a silent black and white film. The main actor successively tries on the clothes specific to each character in the scene in order to choose his role (pianist, barman, drunk, dancer, writer). But he does not know that the film carries on in colour in his private life that is to turn out to be just as fictional. The story is based on the dichotomy between a predetermined sequence of events and the initial existential question. In this film set situation there is a consciousness of man and his status. He is formatted, framed, dependent on cinematographic figures, from a life where a sound register is imposed, a visual field, a spectrum of restrained colours... He looks for a psychological freedom off the beaten track to exist. Via an apparently programmed work, with planified rushes, the development of the character runs parallel with part of the spectator's life that pursues him in spite of itself. The simultaneousness and the occasional gaps in the sound, visual and typographic effects make the filming process as present and functional as a secondary character might usually be. Continual imbrications of natural and musical sounds compose and rhythmically break down the action. The film is orchestrated on a swinging movement proportional to the respective intrusions of sound and image, a scenography for the ear/music for the eyes.
