Niki is an emotional biopic about visual artist Niki de Saint Phalle. This is Céline Sallette’s first film. In theaters since last Wednesday.
When it opened in 1977, the Georges-Pompidou center highlighted some revolutionary works in its possession, such as a Nana by Niki de Saint Phalle, representation of an obese and shapeless female body, in garish colors, which sat majestically in the middle of the Museum of Modern Art. I was very young then, and I was taken to see this already renowned sculpture, among a few others which undoubtedly struck me less.
I got the preconceived idea that Niki de Saint Phalle had represented herself, and that in reality she had this monstrous physique! This childish conclusion lasted in me for a very long time – perhaps even until today, where a film, a biopic, finally gives us, and for eternity perhaps, the true silhouette, frail and slender, of Niki , her innate grace and her spirited youth.
A striking resemblance
There is also a striking physical resemblance between Niki de Saint Phalle and the actress chosen to play her, Quebecer Charlotte Le Bon. This incarnation is literally a reincarnation. You should also know that Charlotte Le Bon’s career is not without points in common with that of Niki: modeling, and a great interest in the visual arts. Note, in this sense, that Charlotte Le Bon directed a feature film, Falconin 2022, which received the Louis-Delluc prize for first film the same year. By its mere presence in NikiCharlotte Le Bon, former “miss weather” on Canal+, therefore indirectly provides a complete denial of my first impression felt in Beaubourg in 1977, about which I am obviously lost in conjectures.
Also read: “Motherland”, Alexandre Aja’s new nightmare
The emergence of genius
Niki is not only a debut film, but the first film of an actress. Céline Sallette, after having interpreted a large number of roles in the cinema, began this biopic on Niki de Saint Phalle with great conviction and a certain success. It was selected at Cannes this year in the “Un certain regard” category. What interests Céline Sallette, above all, is to show the blossoming of Niki de Saint Phalle’s artistic genius. Born in 1930 into a stuffy aristocratic family, with an American mother and a French father, young Niki decides to escape to France, the land of freedom. She would later reveal that she had been the victim of incest at the hands of her father. This event will most likely worsen his already fragile and vulnerable mental state. The doctor who takes care of her, an equivocal psychiatrist, will have her committed to a specialized department. However, it is there that she will discover her artistic vocation, which nothing suggested. “I need to do something… she laments. I want to make my own creation, it’s my vocation… I found it among the madmen. » And in fact, the practice of art will almost overcome his suicidal temptations.
Put all the gum
Of her two husbands, Harry Mathews and Jean Tinguely, it is undoubtedly the second who supported her the most and who understood her the best. She will even create works with him. The inspiration of Niki de Saint Phalle, although a self-taught artist, can be found in the ultramodernist movements of the sixties, such as the “New Realists”, and undoubtedly also in a painter like Jean Dubuffet, inventor of art brut. Niki also excelled in performancefor example in the famous Shotswhere she discharged colored cartridges from a hunting rifle onto painted canvases, to free herself, she told the public, from the anger that was within her. Wanting to establish herself legitimately in the world of art, Niki de Saint Phalle had to demonstrate a lot of perseverance in order to remove the obstacles. Everyone around her tended to tell her that her sculpture was worthless, or that for her it was just a housewife’s occupation. Each time, she questioned herself, deciding to go even further and put all the gumto use Jean Tinguely’s expression.
The pain of being in the world
Niki felt a pain in living, despite the joys of creation. It is this pain that she expresses in her work and that the film makes us feel so well. Céline Sallette was not allowed to show works by the artist, which, in my opinion, in no way hinders the smooth running of her film. Because deep down, Niki only represented, thanks to his genius, the world around him, certainly through the filter of his soul. And this world does not move, it is still ours today. The very work of Niki de Saint Palle is the reality of ” There is “as Rimbaud already proclaimed in his Illuminations (cf. “Childhood”, § III): “In the woodswrites Rimbaud, there is a bird, its song stops you and makes you blush. Etc., etc. »
Also read: The toxic mushrooms of François Ozon
Niki is a film about childhood and youth, and the special emergence of a particularly endearing artist. Céline Sallette puts a lot of vigor and bite into it, especially when she describes Niki’s skin-deep romantic relationships. We then say to ourselves that this cinema, when it thus reaches these kinds of paroxysms, places itself in line with those of Pialat or Breillat. Niki is fortunately not an American-style biopic, but a subtle film, in good faith, which allows a real encounter to take place and, therefore, the spectator leaves the screening better than he entered it .
Nikifilm by Céline Sallette. Biopic, 1h 38. With Charlotte Le Bon. In theaters since last Wednesday.
Related News :