Reviews / 14 October 2005
Through the Forest
À travers la forêt / France / 2005
Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s latest feature, Through the Forest is composed of ten meticulously crafted shots, each running for six or seven minutes. Despite this formal rigor, the narrative has a free-flowing, dreamlike quality, taking twists and turns that may leave audiences occasionally puzzled, but also deeply absorbed.
Atmosphere and mood are emphasized over plot, but the story essentially revolves around a young woman named Armelle who is mourning the sudden death of her boyfriend Renaud. She is surrounded by her two sisters, both of whom are troubled by her seeming incapacity to move on. After hearing Armelle describe the vivid dreams she’s been having, in which Renaud materializes to make passionate love to her, the more sympathetic of the sisters suggests she visit a medium to try to communicate directly with him. While at the medium’s, Armelle is shocked to glimpse a boy named Hippolyte, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Renaud.
Although Civeyrac uses a precise chapter-like structure to delineate nine of the ten shots, his camera is by no means static. During the scene with the medium (played with cat-like intensity by Mireille Roussel), the camera nearly becomes a character unto itself, roving across the room in sweeping motions which dramatize Armelle’s emotional turmoil. Civeyrac’s background as a choreographer comes through in this scene as well as the movie’s opening shot, in which a luminous Armelle breaks into an impromptu song before Renaud, who is revealed to have been a musician.
This emphasis on music and sound continues throughout the film’s 65-minute running time. The sounds of the natural world — birds chirping, the distant rumble of thunder — mix with the movie’s eerie musical score, adding to the trancelike atmosphere Civeyrac creates. Midway through the film, these elements become especially pronounced, as the aftermath of pivotal event calls into question whether a main character is alive, dead, or somewhere in-between.
As abstract as all of this may sound, the film has a startling immediacy, especially in its handling of grief. This is chiefly due to the performance by Camille Berthomier, who plays Armelle with deep intensity and (unexpectedly) occasional flashes of humor. Struggling to cope with conflicting emotions and desperate to reconnect with Renaud, her expressive face and demeanor draw the audience deep into this hypnotic tale.
Beth Gilligan / © 2005 notcoming.com
Comments / 4 total / Submit Comment
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Because of the film’s plot, Hoberman called this a “Ghost story” (with emphasis on the emphasis), but that shouldn’t deter anyone from catching it if they can. Civeyrac is not very well known in France, let alone over here, but hopefully the strength of this sumptuously beautiful film will find him an audience (and distribution) in both countries. In the meantime, I encourage people to seek this film out. Its use of the sequence shot owes a great debt to Tarkovsky: the long takes unify the space of action and make the film’s more surreal, hallucinatory elements more concrete and surprising. But Civeyrac is able to use this aesthetic in the service of a remarkably concise and moving narrative.
It’s also worth noting that this is one of the most frankly erotic and romantic films I’ve seen in a long time — two qualities rarely seen together these days.
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The plan-sequences are interesting formally, but i don’t see any relation to Tarkovsky who loathed mannerism and stylization…
The film has just been released in France last week.
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The notion of structuring a film as a series of ten sequence shots would not have appealed to Tarkovsky — true. But in other respects, Tarkovsky’s work is quite stylized. The comparison I’m making here is based on the magical realist nature of the work, which, like Tarkovsky’s films, rely heavily on long takes in which things “magically” change. (I’m thinking here of many such “trick” shots in Tarkovsky, such as the scene with multiple Haris in Solaris and that of the old woman’s ghost whom the boy sees in his father’s house in Mirror.)
Great to hear that it’s been released in France. Hopefully, this will followed by wider distribution or at very least a DVD.
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On second thought, the two examples you cite (in Stalker too) might lookalike somehow, talent aside. I’d say Civeyrac builds a plan from the outside in, unlike Tarkovsky (inside out), and that changes the spirit/intent of the scene I guess. Although, like you say, the work could have been influenced by a selective reading of Tarkovsky’s directing. The young actors are doing fine but they aren’t seasoned enough to make us forget all this is staged.
Not even a wide release at home here, but the press praised it big time (except Les Cahiers).
Credits
Directed by
Jean-Paul Civeyrac
Source
ID Distribution 35mm print
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