CRÈVE CŒUR

A house, in the suburbs of a small town in the East of France, at the edge of a forest, the ideal place for a tale, for beginnings and for ends. At the outset, the search for a certain Jonathan. His companions have just found him aimlessly wandering around, silent and apathetic, and he’s been doing nothing but lying down, moving from one mattress to another, from one room to another. No-one hears the sound of his voice; others will make their own barely audible. We discover a small community, at the threshold of marginality, peopled with almost silent characters: as with all attempts at discussion, the faculty of dialogue known as speech seems to have taken leave of them. A time when the media, songs, and television would have been in charge of readily confiscated words. Moving around landscapes haunted by death and threats, an often tactile camera sticks to bodies which seem to be moving once in a while (cutting, training for fighting, dancing) but, more often than not, they lie inert, sitting, and passive. Crève cœur sets out to explore an in-between, a paradoxical and uncertain time of waiting, one likely to follow the action immediately after. One senses that disobedience is just barely muffled or pregnant with latent rebellion – many clues are provided – while some kind of powerlessness seems to have settled. What for? – we might ask. Strictly speaking, just to get up, walk, and be active. And contradict the title? Though the film’s finale invites us to, Benjamin Klintoe follows in the wake of Pasolini’s resolutely political cinema highlighting his sense for questioning power as necessity of belief. (NF)