J’ai Oublié, J’ai Oublié

It’s hard to classify the films of Eduardo Williams, a young Argentinian director who, after several much noticed shorts shot in France and in his country, sets —or rather brings— his camera in Vietnam. A cinema about sensations, about experience: the very wide angle captures in a generous gesture the life of a young man, Hoa, who is often surrounded with his group of friends. Following Hoa, busy with various odd jobs, we go from a supermarket to a bar, then in a backyard, we join a motorbike ride through the streets of Hanoi, we cross bridges, go through orchards, to end up on the roofs of a disused building site. Following the little group whose trite, sometimes surprising if not weird conversation we catch snatches, Eduardo Williams shows again his interest in groups and his ability to film them. Simplicity, obviousness of the cutting, a manner of gracefully spinning around his characters, to create a cinema of freedom, won with no apparent effort, in the image of his character that nothing really seems to connect to the ground. Maybe that’s where the beauty of the film lies, and our delight in letting ourselves get involved in a sensory, casual and poetical, strange and familiar experience, in a movement that makes us discover again a certain primal amazement in front of the film. Cinema of youth, youth of the cinema. (CG)