One summer on the Normandy coast, a young boy struggles to overcome the boredom of a summer holiday spent alone. He passes his time how he can but tennis against a wall and the bicycle rides he makes are not enough to fill his days which stretch out in idleness. This all changes when he finds a companion in an enchanting transparent girl, who's mystery he seeks to fathom.
FILMS YOU WON'T SEE ANYWHERE ELSE
Shown Saturday the 20th of October 2007 at Campbellworks (see Campbellworks link top right for details of venue). See below for discussion and comments. Any who missed this and who are still intereted to see the film get in touch.
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Links
AFCA - association française du cinéma d'animation
http://www.afca.asso.fr/
L'Enfent Invisible on Yahoo Movies
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809364801/info
AFCA Screening of L'Enfent Ivisible - Porte Saint-Eustache
http://www.afca.asso.fr/spip.php?article183
Filmography of André Lindon on uniFrance
http://en.unifrance.org/directories/person/121834/andre-lindon/filmography
L'Enfent Ivisible on French Embassy of Brasil website
http://www.cinefrance.com.br/atualidades/cinema/?filme=87
4 comments:
Bazil, thanks for the opportunity to see the film yesterday. I found it to be a sometimes piercing reinspection of childhood. What's interesting is the beauty with which the nostalgia is portrayed - in part our memory helps us to recall, and in part our memory fails us. I believe the film puts recall and memory in a particular perspective of innocence, curiosity and discovery that is usually only found in fiction.
Thanks to the person who put on the event for patiently giving multiple sets of directions and fetching the attendees.
The movie was votive and evocative.
This is some of what Andrew wrote to me:
I thought the film was absolutely beautiful. The charming drawings and clever cinematography (like the long shots where the boy would pass through several different environments without cutting) aside, I thought I would share my thoughts on the story itself with you. Perhaps you would be so kind as to do the same for me?
Let us go straight to what perhaps will divide opinion most: the invisible girl.
As we watched I had several thoughts about this. Although she is only in the film for a few minutes, we are briefly introduced to a young girl who then moves out of town. The invisible girl, slim and pretty with her delicate yet erotic movements resembles this girl physically and materially, yet shares the same hair as the boy. First I wondered if, given that the invisible girl is seen interacting with the girl and the boy, she could be viewed as a suggestion of some hidden yet mutual desire between them, melding into a series of waking dreams of what-may-have-been. Then I began to think that perhaps the invisible girl is a “real” child after all: she picks things up, wears things and generally behaves in a most tangible manner. But if she is a real girl, then her transparency would mean…what? Is she the lonely and isolated child, so unloved by those around her that it is as if she barely exists? Her character watered down and thin, so insubstantial, so frail?
But in the end the boy, clasping hands with her in what seems like acceptance, also fades and becomes invisible. In loving someone must we lose ourselves?
The other way of looking at it is hinted at by the reference to Proust: that what we are seeing is a waking sequence of memories, perhaps memories shared by both the boy and the real girl; memories of an earlier time…This would also account for the out-of-body sequences where the camera soars over the land and water, from the boy in his room to the wide world, and then back to the boy again. Memory, melding with life in a waking dream.
Memories then of young love and sexual exploration, of riding together down sunny hills and creeping through murky caves. Memories of movement, gesture; memories of sitting together doing nothing. Memories of the boy and girl when they were in love, told as their relationship draws to its final curtain (with her leaving the town). It is then, a broken love story told through memory. In this light the final scene becomes even more intriguing: after the boy writes a letter to someone he too becomes invisible. Who is he writing too? We presume the girl. Is the scene with him invisible a full entry into his memories of a happier time? Or is it a spectre of future reconciliation? My instinct goes for the former.
I must say that for me this film was filled with intense loneliness. A lingering, stark feeling, amplified by the crashing of the waves and crying of the birds. This resonates very deeply with me. When I was a child my family used to spend every summer in either Portugal or the south of France, so when I see the sun-blushed French hills, the crashing sea, I feel a tremor inside that whispers “I have known such places.”
I saw this film many years ago on TV, it really does have a magical charm and is something of a lost gem.
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