“Scarlet” (“L’envol”): Film Review | skin 2022

Italian director Pietro Marcello has made a name for himself in several documentaries, including Wolf mouth (2009) and lost and beautiful (2015), before moving into fiction with Jack London’s 2019 adaptation Martin EdenWhich established him as a daring new talent on the art scene.

Although this film, which took place from San Francisco to Naples, was based on the original story, it still felt like a documentary, as if Marcello had somehow traveled to pre-WWII Italy with his 16mm camera and captured the events. how they occurred Martin Eden I felt something new, even if it was more about the past than the present, using techniques, including archival footage as substitutes for historical settings, that put the viewer in a moment from another time.

This time, while working in France, Marcello uses a similar method. Scarlet (l’envol), a Bildungsroman-like narrative about a girl who was raised alone by her father after the First World War, with all the suffering and hardship that followed. The setting is intimate and epic in the scope of a naturalistic novel, but also full of elements of fantasy and poetic license, as reflected in Russian author Alexander Green’s 1923 book. scarlet candles.

The mix of the real and the surreal, the artistic and the non-artistic is not always convincing on a dramatic level, especially when the love story between a young heroine, Juliet (played by up-and-coming newcomer Juliet Juan) and a courageous older pilot, Jean (Louis Garelli), who One day, the second half takes root. At this point, Marcello’s methods, which now include the insertion of various musical numbers as in Jacques Deme’s film, do not pay for a somewhat unknown story, resorting to clichés rather than new ideas.

This is a shame, as many excellent details are shown, most notably in the opening of the film, which left audiences immersed in French realism after the First World War, when the men returned home surprised if they were luckily still alive. . It’s the case of Raphael (the excellent but sophisticated Raphael Thierry) who enters a farm in Normandy to discover that his wife has died and their daughter, Juliet, has been raised by a loving landowner, Adeline (Naomi Lvowski).

Raphael, a giant tile of a man with huge stone hands, resembles the Gallic version of The Thing from Marvel’s Fantastic Four, but behind all the flesh and bones is an artistic spirit. Desperately looking for a job in his carpenter profession, he finds work at a local construction site. But his career soon falls apart when a rivalry with a local cafe owner, who raped Raphael’s wife while he was on the front lines, ends in disaster.

The small-town drama is less convincing than how Marcello portrays everyday life in a French village in the 1920s and how some people tried to escape it. Raphael may be a man who works only with his hands, but he can make beautiful things, including wooden toys and sculptures, or fix an old broken piano, which will become Juliet’s way of fantasizing about a better life.

Fiction takes on greater prominence when a girl becomes a teenager and crosses paths with a swamp woman (Yoland Moro) who looks like a Norman pixie and performs songs by composer Gabriel Yard.Talented Mr. Ripley) Because he helps his father chop wood. It ends with a long sequence in which, like a mermaid of the sea, Juliet sings a quiet stream, unaware that Jean, the plump, female pilot whose plane crashed, is bathing nearly naked and instantly falls in love with her.

The cheese factor in this sequence is undeniable, but Marcello and cinematographer Marco Graciaplana print things out so charmingly, using 16mm grain, tons of natural light, and lens light that you can seize the moment without believing it. . This is true in many ways. ScarletHowever, the movie goes too far in the last few scenes of the cliffhanger to be convincing, particularly when it comes to the underworld involving a local boy who wants revenge on Juliet, which will lead to more tragedy.

If you strip away all the extras, it’s basically a classic coming to terms with a girl trying to escape her humble beginnings and a pilot falling from the sky on “scarlet sails” to save her. It’s not groundbreaking, but Marcello has a talent for bringing this material to life in his inventive direction, to separate us from the time and place where we feel like we’re there. It’s not enough to do this Scarlet Excellent film, but he is the one who manages to put us in his place as many films do today.