Posing is my pleasure

In the beginning, published in 2005, the novel with the same title by Aïcha Liviana
Messina. The author teaches philosophy in a university in Chile; in Paris, she strips
for art students at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Nice flip-flop. That allows to wind a
reflection where aesthetics merges into a genre no longer seriously (can we say it?)
practiced: philosophical autobiography. The order of the day, well-known questions:
what is a body? an identity? its representation? And others, less well-worn out, for
example: and nudity, do you think about it (seriously, that is)?
From this written program, falsely academic, Sara Pozzoli, Italian filmmaker, grabs
holds, to transfer it, with her question marks, to the cinema. Result? A fine invention
where still images from daily life (Aïcha’s quotidian) with static shots of a still body
subject to the gaze of draughtsmen, sculptors, in short from the pose to its
resumption (Aïcha model).
Made of brilliant round-trips, the films suggests this: a body thinks, naked or
covered. The film not only suggests it, but says it, ventures there, is on the lookout
for it, and that’s why another body dares to show itself here. What other body? A
voice, off, thus invisible, that accompanies, undresses immediately or slowly dresses
again what we are looking to see, and which is nonetheless in front of us. Move
along, move along, this discreet voice tells, everything remains to be seen,
everything remains to be said. (NF & JPR)