Qui aime bien...

Ça fait plaisir quand certains journalistes dans des feuilles renommées se lâchent sur nos petits travers autistico-auteuristiques.

The camera is fixed on a nondescript house on a narrow Paris street which is still nicer than anything you could possibly afford. For six hours, there is absolutely no movement on the screen. As you watch in steadily mounting horror, absolutely nothing happens. Then it continues to not happen. Hours go by. Finally, with several audience members in comas and a sizeable group in the lobby beating the theater manager to death, a small leaf on a lush tree near the house trembles as a worm begins eating it. This is perceived by only the most astute viewers, for it takes place off screen.

PULL BACK TO REVEAL

The inhabitants of the house - DANIEL HAUGHTÉ, the intellectual, emotionally guarded host of the literary television show "Your French Will Never Be Good Enough To Understand Me" and his intellectual, sophisticated wife JULIETTE BINOSHING, who has grown curvaceous in ripe middle age - are watching a videotape on their television set that shows the very same boring scene that we have been watching. Mysteriously, however, they are not bored!

                    JULIETTE
You say you found this tape of our house in a package left on our doorstep along with a hideous drawing showing the cutting of a man's throat?

                    DANIEL
Never mind that, ma cherié. Observe the ambiguous fluidity of the mise-en-scène! What a marvelously subtle yet disturbing filmic experience. It suggests to me that whoever has been secretly filming the outside of our house is a master of cinematic technique. Obviously a disciple of Bresson but with the implied muscularity of the young Stallone.

Cliché (Guilty White Bourgeoisie in Denial)
Un Film de JOYCE WADLER
NYT 1/24/06