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REAL LIFE IS ELSEWHERE
Feature film directed by Frédéric Choffat, written by Julie Gilbert and Frédéric Choffat, 84 min, 35mm, 2006
International Competition / Cinéastes du Présent LOCARNO 2006
Three trips, three inquiries, one story. Fredéric Choffat leaves three times for a shooting with a crew reduced to a strict minimum: two actors, one director of photography, one sound engineer, and one assistant on their way to Marseilles, Naples, or Berlin. Carrying in his pocket only the canvas of the film, corresponding to the structure of a couple of pages, describing very precisely the frame of the story, but without any details or any dialogue.
Each story was filmed in a week, in order and in real time, shifting an hour forward every day to be able to film the sunrise on the last two days. The settings slowly assemble themselves in close collaboration between the director and the actors.
It’s about bodies, about exchanging gestures, about the confrontation between a man and a woman, about what is a woman and what is a man –such are the themes explored by Federic Choffat through these improvisations. Imprisoned in small places (train station, compartment, hotel room) within a story reduced to the strict minimum, the director and the actors make this “huis clos” a place of experimentation. The elaboration of the characters was pushed to its limits, allowing through shots and discussions the appearance of a “cinema de l’intime”.
After the shooting, the cutting allowed to mix and join these three life stories, and to have a glimpse at this long night where the real trip of these six characters becomes an inside travel where everything could collapse, just slightly, just how it should.
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