Le coeur du conflit

At the opening, with nuclear central railways in the background, an apostrophe is heard: « Will you be sowing tomorrow if the world comes to an end? » A pressing question followed by Eisenstein’s remark highlighting conflict as the very principle of montage. And here it is: this is how the film’s matrix is presented: on the one hand, the world and its future in nuclearized space; on the other, cinema as representation with montage as its modus operandi. And now that Judith and Masa have become fictional alter-egos of both film-makers, they embark us, at times with their doubles by their side, on a cascade of intertwined questions. She, the French woman, and he, the Japanese man, film-makers and couple, take us back and forth between Paris, Fukushima and Hiroshima. Duras and child parents as well as fears and desires are summoned from digressions to unexpected leaps.
The conflict in the title unfolds very much like yarrow, where History and « the question of the intimate towards the political » interfere, where political desire, desire to have children and desire for film-making (she suggests they « have a political child ») confront one another, and where modes and image régimes (filmed diary, documentary, fiction) contaminate each other. While never letting go of its burlesque tone, this self-reflexive film mixes with self-derision and perhaps false lightness; it moves forward and sinuously according to the principles of questioning, comparing and contaminating. A political tale where irradiance plays as much as metaphor and principle as a tangible, though invisible, threat. (NF)
Masayasu Eguchi Judith Cahen