Short cuts
RAKESH MEHAR
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The French short film festival to be screened today provides a perspective untouched by mainstream cinema
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IN BRIEF The films explored wide range of human emotions
With so many of today's sub-standard feature length films stealing large chunks of our lives, festivals such as Les Lutins du Court Metrage often come as quite a relief. Dedicated to the cause of promoting young, upcoming filmmakers, the festival showcases the best French short films, voted by a jury of notable members of French cinema. In its ninth edition, the festival is being screened in Bangalore thanks to the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore.
Divided into three collections, this year's Les Lutins features 25 fiction and animation films ranging in length from a mere five minutes to close to three-quarters of an hour. Catching day two of the festival, I cannot help but appreciate the refreshing change in perspective that the selection of films throws up. Banking on one of the inherent advantages of short films — a somewhat satisfying lack of closure — and working without any presumptions whatsoever, each film provides an interesting take on life in its various forms, but refuses to do all the thinking for the viewer.
The evening kicks off with La Femme Seule (A Woman Alone), based on the story of Akosse Legba, a 32-year-old Togolese woman suffering a life of forced domestic labour in France. Directed by Brahim Fritah, the film uses a montage of still-pictures with occasional moving shots and a voice-over narrative in the first person to tell the woman's story. The excellent aesthetic quality of the still life on screen serves nicely to highlight the chaos and pain of her life not captured on camera. The restraint of the narrator's voice, combined with the obvious lack of violence on the screen, only leaves one with ominous images of what is not being said straight out.
Changing lanes
Just as the weight of the first film begins to sink in, things abruptly shift a gear with Le Marin Acéphale (The Headless Sailor), an absurd tale about a sailor in love with two sisters. Directed by Lorenzo Recio, this hilarious short details the sailor's dilemma, as he quite literally loses his head over love.
La Princesses de la Piste (Painting the Town Red) by Marie Helia follows. The discovery of a message — "All women have the right to love" followed by a phone number — in the restroom of a bar, leads two women and the author of the message on an unusual evening of fun and adventure. One of the nicest night-out-on-the-town sequences I've seen, the film flows wonderfully with easy dialogues, quick wit and a pleasant but quirky chemistry between the threesome.
Chahut (Din), an animated film about a tourist who misses out on a celebration and feels like a fish out of water by Gilles Cuvelier, and Kitchen, a side-splitting farce on the violence involved in the mundane, domestic process of cooking a nice meal by Alice Winocour also go by.
The personal favourite of the evening though, is Le Regulateur by Philippe Grammaticopoulos.
It follows the efforts of a couple to create their perfect child out of spare parts lined up by the hundreds in a factory. Despite all their efforts, and the endless bouquet of choices laid out before them, the couple is unable to create their perfect child. Using simple two-dimensional, black and white characters and a slightly disconcerting score, this animation film pokes wonderful fun at the inroads science has made into the very process of creation itself.
The day draws to an end with Libre Échange (Free Market) by Olivier Robinet De Plas, the story of a man's growing inadequacy after a failed swinging session and Céleste by Valérie Gaudissart, a depressing story of a woman's growing pregnancy.
As the lights come on at the end of three hours, I am spent, but astounded at the range of emotions I have been led through. The final product may still be rough around the edges, lacking the polish of big-budget films, but this is territory mostly inaccessible to mainstream cinema.
These and the other films of the Les Lutins festival are being screened again on May 26 at 6 p.m. and on May 27 at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. For more details, contact Alliance Francaise on 41231340 / 43 /44.
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