About The Invisible by Jean Perret
Taken from the catalogue of the 2005 "Visions du réel" International Festival in Nyon, Switzerland.
It’s an intense pleasure to watch a keen intelligence at work, without any creative tricks getting in the way and interfering with the sight of a man, a face and a voice talking about difficult yet fascinating ideas. We are at La Borde where Nicolas Philibert filmed Every Little Thing (La Moindre des choses). This clinic is run by the psychiatrist Jean Oury, whom the filmmaker meets. Fixed shots and a few dissolves to black lend rhythm to the structuring of the thought. Notions such as the sweeper and the swing-bridge keeper, the atmosphere, the vigilance surrounding or underlying expressions such as “performing open transplants” or “you can take that for granted/ you can’t take that for granted” seem simple at first sight, but Oury dissects their complexity with a charismatic presence. The issues at stake are recalled several times and the mood is one of resistance in relation to the notion of traditional psychiatry and its therapeutic programmes. Oury talks about Philibert's film that describes daily life, the question of transference and the unconscious desires that guide it, the main themes of his reflection. He explains to what extent everything relating to the non-visible is essential to life taken in its relentless polyphony and heterogeneousness.
