Dernier arrêt pour le billet circulaire, Last stop for the circular ticket

One should remember the film Trois fois rien, whose first part takes place on the shores of a different lake in northern Italy. At the time, I was at Lake Garda with Clément Rodzielski, who is the main figure of this feature film. Later, I returned alone to those magnificent landscapes, most often to Lake Como.

In Three Times Nothing, I was living through a passion. I was infatuated, and the shots sometimes are a witness of that feeling. Nothing of the sort in Dernier arrêt pour le billet circulaire.There I am alone, among couples with loving gestures, expressing their wonder at the beauty of the place.

In solitude, vision becomes purified… Framed by the opening of the ferry that looks out onto the vast landscape, the image finds its rightness in long panoramic shots traced by the course of the boat, achieving a perfect harmony of lines when the ferry reaches its straight route.

The circular movement of the ferries, from one stop to the next, is also the movement of the film, in which shots recur, magnified by a musical chord and it becomes an enchantment when the soprano’s voice naturally mingles with the flow of the journey, in modulations where the surrounding sounds blend with the musical excerpts.

Sound has become the main element in the adjustment of the shots and the film is heard as though it were a musical construction. Gestures, movements, even the motion of a swing tuning in to the music, possess the precision of a choreographed score.

This was already present in The Enclosed Valley, when visitors take place before the chasm, halted at the edge of the void. On the lake, the tourists’ gaze loses itself in the splendour of the landscape and the depth is no less vertiginous.

Without breaking the circularity, a trajectory gradually emerges that brings the film to fulfillment. The journey ends. After photographing the shoreline, the ferry’s passengers return to their cars as the landing stage approaches. Perceiving this linearity does not interrupt contemplation.

Twice, we know where I am going: Aspetta, aspetta! … Dove vai? All’Isola Comacina. The lake’s only island, stopping there would be the reason for the journey. Leaving the circuit behind to rest one’s eyes after so many views. It is the film’s imaginary place, where no boat is ever seen docking.

On the ferry, among the travelers, I recognised Mrs Death, an old woman dressed in black, whose limping gait, set to the rhythm of an incongruous flute melody, seems to stumble against an obstacle preventing her from moving forward. Seeing her there, her step suspended, she is amusing.

With no passengers left, after one final stop, the ferry disappears into the night. The image fades into black, then brightens once more, accompanied by the shrilling sound of the flute, to reveal one last time Cupid, the infant Love, in the middle of the pool, in the garden by the lake.