The great French film about back to school
From so many things and feelings comeIn his image by Thierry de Peretti that it is difficult to completely untie the pretty knots it makes in the heart. Perhaps we should then turn the pages of the novel by Jérôme Ferrari, published in 2018 and of which this new film is the adaptation. But In his image is an autonomous work, a film that is not a revisitation of the book on the screen, nor a complement. There is another vision of this story, that of a young photographer who wants to tell the story of Corsica, to be kept as a logbook of images of her island, both through the political events that shake her, and through her intimate life and that of her relatives, friends and nationalist activists with deeply rooted ideals.
We learn from the first minutes that this story, carried forward by Antonia (the radiant revelation Clara-Maria Laredo), ends with her accidental death. The certainty of death already looms, a shadow that seems to have always been cast over Corsica. Antonia is, after about fifteen years, tired of a professional life where she had to fight tirelessly, and also tired of her intimate history, that of her loved ones and her lover Pascal, strewn with violent deaths, silences, struggles and resignations. With her camera, Antonia captures the lives of young Corsicans, from the 80s to the dawn of the 2000s, these same young people and these same years that see Corsica shaken by the split within the FLNC.
Thierry de Peretti makes his revolution
Gun triggerA violent lifehere we move on to the camera trigger. Another device of “death”, which transforms the present into a scene forever inscribed in the past, so that it survives. Photography to distance or on the contrary to bring as close as possible to a fleeting present? This is also one of the inebriating questions of the film. This change of instrument of action, from the weapon to the camera, is also accompanied by a change of point of view. In A Sua Immagine, rather than the gaze of men, as also happened withInvestigation into a State Scandalit is the one worn by women. And this is nothing on the territory of Corsica, a male-dominated country if there ever was one.
In a masterly introduction in three sequences the entire scene of the tragedy is set in motion and the machinery is set in motion. First a telephone conversation in the shadow of a small hotel room, where the body of a woman takes shape. Then this same woman in full sunlight, time for a coffee and a song over a magnificent bay. Finally, this woman, driving her car, who suddenly goes off the road and plunges into a ravine. The intimacy of a person through his flesh and a personal dialogue, a scenario of incomparable beauty and a mechanism that goes towards the accident. This introduction therefore constitutes, in an exceptional achievement, the conclusion of everything that follows.
Antonia’s struggles and borders
Antonia is in love. Antonia is a professional and has aspirations. But Pascal, the man of her life, an activist and young figure in the FLNC, flees their relationship to often commit violent acts and pay the price in prison. Her editor-in-chief at Corse-Matin refuses her permission to go to the “continent”, to Lyon, to take, according to him, simply “another photo”. Her father despairs at her relationship with Pascal and the risks it entails, as well as at her desire to go somewhere other than Corsica. Antonia’s story is that of a constant struggle for her emancipation, as if it were parallel In his image It is the story of Corsica’s desire for political emancipation. It is therefore a question in In his image borders, both physical and mental, political and collective as well as intimate and personal, which Thierry de Peretti travels and frames with a distance of perfect precision.
This story of identity and borders, which Thierry de Peretti transcends through extraordinary writing and staging, is perfectly illustrated in a very successful sequence. The one in which Antonia takes several photographs of Pascal, bare-chested, young and handsome, while he talks on the phone. We do not hear what he says into the receiver but we hear in this sequence, in its entirety, the famous “hymn” of Bérurier noir, Hello to you. By photographing him, is Antonia interfering in the activist’s conversation? By capturing him in his struggle, does the photograph make him an icon, a local Che Guevara? With this piece of music with an internationalist and universal accent, does the struggle for Corsica’s independence converge with other independence struggles around the world in the 1990s?
Islands within the island
Corsica is the subject of In his imagebut the film is not a regionalist work. If it immerses itself in the history of a very limited territory, it does so with a broader perspective, both physical and metaphysical: the perspective of insularity. For its inhabitants, Corsica is the whole world. But, seen from the sea that surrounds it, it is really an island, with other islands around it, continents, a larger world. Antonia, despite the unshakable bond that unites her to her loved ones, is she not also an island, subject to her limits? And, within these limits, condemned to a deadly autonomy? Will she be able to live with Pascal, who is also her island, with her own destiny?
In the only sequence outside Corsica, we find Antonia in Belgrade at the beginning of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. An almost silent sequence, dominated by that heavy and deafening silence that only war can create in its rare moments of truce. As if, in this place more than any other, language was of no use. As if Antonia’s dialogue with the world proved impossible. And as if, finally, nothing could compare to Corsica, and no other love could equal the one she had for Pascal.
Intimate and collective tragedy, fight for the independence of an individual and of an entire people, Thierry de Peretti succeeds In his image to connect the personal and the universal. And it does so with photographs of extraordinary beauty, with the camera pointed at characters all the more authentic because they are played by local people and mostly non-professionals. A great film, gentle and ferocious, where delicacy and violence coexist as closely as possible. And whose intimate and political issues appear extraordinarily topical.
In his image by Thierry de Peretti, in theaters from September 4, 2024. Above is the trailer.
Source: Cine Serie
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