UN SON SUR CETTE DERNIÈRE IMAGE

Sophie Roger
In each of her films (including many of those that have been shared here at FIDMarseille, over the years), it seems as though Sophie Roger has given herself a rule that is unsettling for anyone else: nothing guarantees that the secrets hidden in each work are revealed to the author, let alone anyone else, in a definite way at least. In addition, perhaps this time more than usual, we are confronted with a riddle – in two chapters. On the backdrop of a beautiful green board in an oldfashioned classroom, young people (the pupils we imagine) are putting their hands up stretching to their fingertips, opening their mouths and eyes wide, making emphatic demonstrative gestures. All of them are engaged in prosopopoeia, in other words a scene unfolds which we can only guess at via their evocation. What is the origin of these scenes? Who knows ? They could come from the film, a dream, a hallucination, or a foggy memory. Sophie Roger holds fast, in the frame and at their side. Mute but indisputably complicitous, she watches over these bodies and their singing. Second chapter, now we’re on a bus, with the same protagonists and other people; everyone, or almost, is wearing headphones. We, looking out on the snow that zigzags the landscape like a zebra, hear magnificent, discreet music, composed by Jonathan Harvey, which is artfully interweaves with a child’s voice with a ringing bells of a cathedral. The explanation for this – if you must track it down, perhaps that is where it is hidden: There is a heady mix of sounds in this construct steeped in history with the fragility of a gasp of burgeoning humanity. In other words – Sophie Roger lets these young voices carefully construct the decors, stories and landscapes – we just have to slip into this calm carnival and there’s plenty of room.
(Jean-Pierre Rehm)