In her first film Hic Rosa, partition botanique (Hic Rosa, Botanical Score, FID 2007),
Anne-Marie Faux put the figure of Rosa Luxembourg at the core of a political and
poetic reflection on commitment, its purpose and the necessary to transcend it.
Here, the project takes a different, more intimate and audacious turn: she puts to
the test her own experience, utopias and desires. There is no denying that
autobiographical intentions and introspection have their pitfalls. But a man’s voice
off screen sets the tone from the start: “There is no such thing as a private diary.
The very expression is nonsensical.” No chance then to see outpourings, confessions
or explanations. Here, the “I” unfolds in bits and pieces. From one reading to
another, through various bodies and voices, the words get muddled up. Anne-Marie
Faux intertwines her own family tales taken out of the History of the century with
fragments of texts borrowed to others, which she uses as a solid base. Voices and
bodies, yesterday’s and today’s faces, from one time and one life to another, slowly
weave a personal path. Along the way, she furtively pays tribute to Virginia Woolf or
Chaplin, among others, thus interlocking the inner and the outer space. The film
gives an insight into private gardens, childhood nooks and crannies, where
entangled political and intimate realities become an invitation to keep on “living and
climbing, head on to the wind”, as Rosa Luxembourg’s words call upon us to do.
(NF)