A radical and sensual film! Claire Devers’ Noir et blanc hit theaters last week after a long hiatus as it was never released on DVD.

The story follows Antoine, a young man with no history until he has to undergo massage sessions. He meets Dominique, a black masseuse who considers himself a sadist. He will go through with this strange report without telling anyone.

Noir et blanc is director Claire Devers’ first feature film, which won the Camera d’Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Very well received by the press at the time of its release and leading to an international career, Noir et blanc has since become unexplored as it was, of course, released on VHS but never on DVD.

This invisibility is all the more damaging because Black and White is a unique and distinctive film. Its form, its subject matter, its radicalism… everything impresses in this first feature film.

A very sensual, sensory film, with work on image and sound that create a whole

“At first I went to give a report on sports centers, weight rooms. (…) From there I encountered a subject that I had no doubts about: narcissism, focusing on oneself. Then I read the story “The Black Masseuse” by Tennessee Williams. Then everything is mixed up. I just kept the symbolic image of black from Tennessee Williams. I was interested in bodybuilding centers as a social phenomenon.”

From this point of departure, the black and white is then transformed into a very sensual, tactile film, working with image and sound to form a whole. The film shows long massage scenes without dialogue. If it’s really a depiction of a sado-maso relationship, on the other hand, Black and White doesn’t try to portray the pleasure of violence. The approach is modest and suggests more than it shows.

“I am very surprised at the discomfort this film causes in some people, especially with its intensity. I didn’t expect it to be so nasty. That my film makes me so uncomfortable. I thought it would be scary, but I didn’t think that fear would make it difficult for some people to follow the story.“, we can read in these remarks delivered by Claire Devers in the press kit.

A black and white, sado-masochistic gay movie classic

Noir et blanc also left its mark on its era because of the relationship between the two men. Should we see a love story there? “For me, there is no homosexual relationship between the two charactersClaire Devers bluntly explains, on the other hand, the idea that film makes it possible to imagine things appeals to the filmmaker.I need the audience to connect with the film“, he said at a preview of the film this Wednesday at Reflet Médicis.

For a geeky magazine, black and white is “A classic of sadomasochistic gay cinema“.”The film was received very well by the gay community, I think, because I was talking about the suffering that we could face in the early 1980s with AIDS.“, notes Claire Devers in the columns of LGBTQ + magazine. I realized that I had touched a very strong emotional chord, but that was not my intention. I was more into mental processing within the concept of masochism“.

This radical film, which evokes both the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the filmmaker David Cronenberg, should by no means leave indifferent those who discover it for the first time today.

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And finally, a bit of a wink: note the appearance of Maïwenn’s mother in the film, Catherine Belkhoja (Maïwenn, by the way, is mentioned in the end-credits credits). The two main roles of the film are played by Jacques Martial and Francis Frappa.

Black and White is in theaters now.