Catherine Soullard / Études – September 1999

Unity of place and time with a minimal plot: at school, one night, the students – actors and stage designers – gather together to fine-tune the basics of a show on Strasbourg. Discussions, moments of silence, asides and diversions, confrontations, looks, music, living tableaux, puppets, small shapes in which bits of the show are sketched out. Moments of grace, boredom, flight or rest, the wager is taken to shoot live to capture everything, to record the time spent searching throughout the night, time that leads to tiredness, obscurity and things that escape all that: the sparkling light of a look, the revelation of a voice, the freshness of an improvisation. The film focuses on trust, tenderness and lightness, on things that are spoken about in passing… And so it will be a question of storks, Delteil (2), marriage, concentration camps, truth and commitment. There will be accordion music, dancing, singing, smiles, sulking and the lively, full laughter of Mounia that bursts forth and imposes itself, without crushing or cracking the warm cohesion of the group. For, at the end of the film, this is what comes forth: a rational intimacy, an attentive ear; a passion shared and this examination of the word “together” that culminates discreetly and magnificently in the final scene of sleep, waking and joy.”

(1) TNS: Théâtre National de Strasbourg

(2) Joseph Delteil (1894-1978): poet, essayist, novelist, author of around forty books, an original and anti-conformist figure in French literature.