In Paris, Apichatpong Weerasethakul plunges the Center Pompidou into deep sleep

A strange illness seems to have spread to the Center Pompidou in Paris, with its visitors injected with images and sounds. Because we no longer dare to only speak of “cinema” to describe the work of the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, born in 1970 in Bangkok, author of the Palme d’Or in 2010, Uncle Boonmee. The one who remembers his past lives.

“Light experimentation” better designates the tree structure of this work, which at the same time broadens – to installations, even to performance in virtual reality (VR) – and tends towards minimalism. The title of the complete retrospective of his production, “Lights and Shadows”, which takes place until January 6, 2025 in Beaubourg, as part of the Autumn Festival, speaks for itself.

In addition to the filmmaker’s eight feature films, including Tropical Malady (2004), Oncle Boonmee (2010), Cemetery of Splendour (2015) et Memory (2021) – filmed in Colombia, with Tilda Swinton – and a few short films, spectators will discover the exhibition entitled “Particules de nuit”, where a series of intimate videos interact in the Atelier Brancusi (on the square in front of the Center Pompidou), which the artist plunged into darkness.

Intoxicating, the stroll acts as a memorial walk in the cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, nicknamed “Joe” by those close to him, for short. We find there the elements that populate his films: childhood memories, myths of reincarnation (animal, with tiger, catfish, etc.), stories of villagers remembering the incursions of the army tracking down the communists, sounds of the jungle in overprints.

Some images act like flashes: young soldier sleeping, mouth open, leaning against a tree trunk, woman dozing under the blanket (Tilda Swinton having sweet dreams), old man on dialysis (a double echo of the filmmaker’s father, the end of his life, and to the character of Uncle Boonmee). Close-up of a hand incessantly transcribing a dream on a blank page. Would the eyes escape from our heads, to see better? A few eyeballs float in space, like soap bubbles, in the video installation Solarium (2023), and we can’t help but think of the ghost monkey fromOncle Boonmeereincarnation of a missing son, returning one evening to the family table and asking his loved ones to reduce the light intensity: “There’s too much light, I can’t see”he said in substance.

A sweet dizziness

As for performance in VR, A Conversation with the Sun (a creation based on a previous installation and a book of the same name), it literally takes us off the ground. Here we are like these transmigratory souls who are reincarnated in other bodies, in other places. In the distance, two red eyes (those of the ghost monkey) watch us go away…

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