FAUX ACCORDS

“After the death of his partner, a man discovers on the Internet that the latter had virtual relations with another man. He prints all the messages and, after burning all his partner’s possessions, starts imagining the correspondent with two different faces depending on the content of the messages. In the end, he pours his partner’s ashes on his naked chest.” That is the abrupt synopsis delivered by Paul Vecchiali. In spite of his sparing style, many patterns peculiar to the obsessions of this great filmmaker can be found here: the distance put at the heart of the love relationship — in mourning, here, as much as in the letter exchange. The diversity in each person translated into a multiplicity of masks and characters. The prominent place offered to the story in the dictated style of a recitative or a recitation. The mingling of a moral code and tragedy as the horizon of the film production: the filmmaker, himself a protagonist and a quiet distraught wise man, wanders amid the precepts of his screenplay, which are like paper sheets thrown on the ground as the reading goes along. False agreements are solid, they help to establish many links. (JPR)