LE JUIF DE LASCAUX

Is it possible to create the autobiography of an inhibition? Especially if it involves denial about birth, about origins. Especially when this silence covers horror. By conducting an investigation, stirring up archives, by going down paths of secrecy? Perhaps, but this is not Louis Skorecki’s approach. The famous critic-filmmaker opts for less severe means which are also less secure. Rather than articulate a story or subject of testimony, a series of vignettes is presented to us. Some silent or almost, burlesque contained in a strained smile, others talkative but often close to babble, all coolly funny, all illuminated by the natural light of summary alleys or gardens, we are presented with a small family puppet theatre. Then follows a concoction of culinary specialties, reproaches, accents, Yiddish expressions, animal masks, Adam and Eve multiplied and, in the place of a protagonist, several characters including Joseph Morder, a prolific filmmaker. Yet there is nothing familiar in all this, on the contrary: the odd, the offbeat, the slightly sad, the almost funny – nothing, ever, turns out as it should. With its strange juxtaposition, the title foretells neither what it would be like to be Jewish nor from Lascaux, Skorecki pretends to be the knowing owner. (JPR)