With Et j’aime à la fureur, Andre Bonzelli invites us to live with an extraordinary experience in a film composed entirely of amateur film clips. Journey through his personal and family history, to the cinemas on April 20th. Focus.
What are you talking about?
Andre Bonzel has loved amateur movies since childhood. The hundreds of rings he has collected allow him to, picture-by-picture, collect a fragmentary history of his family, sometimes filling in the gaps with something he guesses or fantasizes about. She saw her first love novels and family dramas with these films depicting her life, the lives of her loved ones and even strangers.
It is from this passion that a film is formed, before our eyes, just as when we look at old dusty attic boxes. It not only offers reflection on deeper topics such as family, evolution, and personal performance, but also on more philosophical topics such as our relationship with cinema, image perception, or memories.
Co-director of a cult film
If his name is unfamiliar to you, it’s because Andre Bonzel is a wise filmmaker. A director of short documentaries, his first feature film became a cult: It Happened Near You, released in 1992.
In this black-and-white parody of the TV show Strip-tease, we follow the wandering of a serial killer performed by Benoit Poelvorde. Moreover, the Belgian actor, who was always very close to the director after studying cinema, advised him to create the whole film from his personal collection.
7th Art Distinguished Family
Et j’aime à la fureur tells the story of its narrator and director Andre Bonzel, who observes the thread of his family history that is already closely linked to cinema. On March 22, 1895, his great-grandfather, Morris, an engineer and a close friend of the Lumiere brothers, was at the very first cinematic screening in history, The Lumiere Factory Workers’ Exit.
Since then the love of taking moving pictures has become central to family life. The taste of cinematography is passed on to many of Maurice’s descendants, sometimes leaving him for generations as Andrew’s father, who is not moved by cinematic magic.
Pharaoh’s picture pool
If Et j’aime à la fureur lasted 1 h 37, its first edit reached 3 h 30. Therefore, it is easy to imagine the astronomical collection of wheels that Andre Bonzel was able to build over the years thanks to heritage or flea markets.
While many very personal documents end in the film, such as family memories or vacations, there are also less ordinary shots, such as images that have crossed continents and epochs, miraculously surviving the pain of time. To create the film, the collection was completely digitized: a large-scale work that offers a unique work that allows subjects to continue living in the film.
The original soundtrack of Benjamin Biolay
The challenge of a feature film consisting only of mute images is to create a soundtrack for it. While Andre Bonzel’s voice perfectly tells his story and several sound effects give the images a contextual atmosphere, it is still necessary to shift everything to the music.
For this, the director called the talented Benjamin Biolay, who created almost the entire soundtrack. The music of the film created according to the images makes it possible to capture the feelings arising from it, even the most moving, and perfectly complements this extraordinary film, which will be found in theaters from April 20.
Source: allocine
Emily Jhon is a product and service reviewer at Gossipify, known for her honest evaluations and thorough analysis. With a background in marketing and consumer research, she offers valuable insights to readers. She has been writing for Gossipify for several years and has a degree in Marketing and Consumer Research from the University of Oxford.
