THE MORNING LIST
Lots of excitement this week, with four films as different as they are expected: the drama by Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof, Seeds of the wild fig tree ; the posthumous film by Sophie Fillières My life my face ; the comedy by Julie Delpy The Barbariansand the documentary Conservatory Streetby Valérie Donzelli.
Not to be missed
“Seeds of the Wild Fig Tree”: An Iranian Family on the Embers
Inaugurated in 2002, Mohammad Rasoulof’s work includes eight feature-length fiction films, most of which were made clandestinely. The latest, Seeds of the wild fig treeinaugurates what was, alas, bound to end up happening: the filmmaker’s pure and simple exile. This time, the Iranian filmmaker is trying to describe the inner workings of totalitarian thought, an ambition made very cleverly possible through the prism of a middle-class family, stewing on the embers of an intergenerational conflict.
The drama unfolds around two simultaneous events. On the one hand, the appointment of Iman, the paterfamilias, to the dreaded position of judge at the revolutionary court in Tehran. On the other hand, the birth of the social protest movement Woman, Life, Freedom, born in the wake of the death, in September 2022, of young Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the morality police, who considered her to be improperly veiled. Reducing totalitarian horror to the dimensions of a family microcosm, Mohammad Rasoulof demonstrates a formidable directorial intelligence. His closed-door setting, both stifling and recalcitrant (we see conflict and women in hair) seems to tell us: “This is the most I can film.” J. Ma.
Iranian, French and German film by Mohammad Rasoulof. With Missagh Zareh, Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki (2 h 48).
“My life, my face”: a defeated woman
Seventh feature film by Sophie Fillières, My life my face comes to us posthumously, concluding the parsimonious work of an atypical filmmaker, who died on July 31, 2023, at the age of 58. Inevitably taking on a testamentary value, My life my face also knows perfectly well how to be something else, faithful to the absurd exuberance and language games that characterize the director. That is to say the endearing portrait of a deranged woman, Barberie Bichette, who, stumbling against the wall of reality, seeks a way out.
Agnès Jaoui, who plays her, immediately imposes the character with a formidable vocal regime: a mumbling in basso continuo, a flow of anarchic thoughts immediately verbalized, shaken by tics and onomatopoeias, which say everything about the inner disorder of this defeated woman. All along, My life my face thus brings together an impregnable humor with the persistent idea of death. Barberie is undoubtedly more than a simple alter ego of Sophie Fillières: a mask to disseminate discreet signs of farewell and caress a beyond of language. My. Mt.
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