VTIFF Program-Guide 2023 - Flipbook - Page 21
FILMS A TO Z
OUR BODY (NOTRE CORPS)
PANIQUE
PERFECT DAYS
Directed by Claire Simon
France | 2023 | Documentary | 168 min | French w/
subtitles
Directed by Julien Duvivier
France | 1946 | Fiction | 100 min | French w/subtitles
Directed by Wim Wenders
Japan, Germany | 2023 | Fiction | 123 min | Japanese,
German w/subtitles
Film Source: Cinema Guild
Sponsored by: Alliance Française of the Lake Champlain
Region and Anonymous
SHOWTIMES
WEDNESDAY, OCT 25 | 3:15 PM | BB
The French director Claire Simon was making a film about
a Paris hospital when she found out she had cancer. So she
became a character in her own film. “I had to film a lot of
naked women,” Simon says in a recent interview. “Then I
was naked, too, and I was just like them. This changed my
point of view entirely; it helped me cope and be calm in the
face of my own sickness.” Simon assembles intimate
patient-doctor consultations and surgical procedures into
something like a volume of short stories, with a clear sense
that there’s been a dialog between the filmmaker and the
subject. She observes the everyday operations of the
gynecological ward and in the process, she questions what
it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity,
singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life.
Through these many encounters, the specific fears, desires
and struggles of these individuals become the health
challenges we all face, even the filmmaker herself. One of
France’s premier nonfiction filmmakers, Claire Simon’s
work as a writer, director, and cinematographer is rooted in
the “direct cinema” teachings of the Ateliers Varan, a
documentary training program founded by Jean Rouch.
~OY
Film Source: Rialto
Sponsored by: Lorna Kay Peal, Alliance Française of the Lake
Champlain Region
Film Source: Neon
Sponsored by: Erica Senft Miller & John Miller
SHOWTIMES
SUNDAY, OCT 22 | 4 PM | FH
SHOWTIMES
MONDAY, OCT 23 | 7 PM | FH
“If I were an architect and I had to build a monument to the
cinema,” wrote Jean Renoir, “I would place a statue of
Julien Duvivier above the entrance.” Duvivier made 70
films between 1919 and 1967, many of them landmarks of
French cinema. His first postwar project, a noir adaptation
of Georges Simenon’s Mr. Hire’s Engagement (later
adapted by Patrice Leconte as Monsieur Hire), stars Michel
Simon as a reviled voyeur framed for a murder by the girl
he adores.
“Seeing it today in a beautifully modulated print should
send shivers through audiences already worried about mob
rule, enforced conformity, and a willingness to pin blame on
anyone different.” – Michael Sragow
Wenders has crafted a film of deceptive simplicity,
depicting the story of Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), who seems
utterly content with the daily routine of his life as a cleaner
of toilets in Tokyo. “Like Groundhog Day”, says Wenders,
“but whereas Bill Murray tries to escape the repetitive
nature of his existence, Hirayama embraces it. In Japanese
culture, in pottery for example, there is an emphasis on the
nobility of the process – the potter’s secret is doing it for
the first time each time, and for our man, Hirayama, it’s the
same. Each day, he’s doing it for the first time.” Who he is
remains cinematically intriguing, as the film spends its
latter half slowly unraveling what lies beneath his veneer of
contentment with a series of unexpected encounters.
Outside of his very structured daily routine Hirayama
*** Pierre Simenon, son of Georges, will introduce the film, enjoys his passion for music and books. The memorable
soundtrack includes Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” – the
and the screening will be followed by an in-person
inspiration for the film’s title. Wenders observes the tiny
conversation with Mr. Simenon and Bruce Goldstein ***
details of a routine existence with such clarity, soulfulness
and empathy that they build a cumulative emotional power
almost without you noticing. A moving and poetic reflection
on finding beauty in the everyday world around us. ~OY
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