Film Review
Avant que j'oublie is the
third and last entry in a series of partly autobiographical films
written and directed by Jacques Nolot, a highly respected actor who
also plays the lead role (an ageing homosexual artist) in each
film. As in his previous two films -
L'Arrière
Pays (1998) and
La Chatte à deux têtes
(2002) - Nolot crafts an intensely melancholic study in solitude and
growing old. This is a cold and austere work that risks
alienating its spectator with its languorous pace and darkly
introspective peregrinations of a man who appears to be teetering on
the brink of suicide upon realising the emptiness of his existence.
With its explicit depictions of gay sex,
Avant que j'oublie is the most
provocative of Nolot's films, particularly as these sequences are shot
in manner that is totally lacking in romantic sensibility and
eroticism, portraying sex as an act of butchery or
self-mutilation. The protracted dialogue-heavy scenes pose an
even greater challenge for the spectator and risk reducing the film's
subject to a languid exercise in intellectual onanism.
Taken together as a body of work, Nolot's three films offer a stark
existentialist meditation on life, difficult to engage with and yet,
like an ugly piece of abstract art,
strangely alluring and meaningful.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Jacques Nolot film:
L'Arrière pays (1998)
Film Synopsis
Pierre, 58, is coming to terms with the changes in his life, with
illness and with death. A stranger in the modern world, he shuts
himself away and ponders in solemn isolation. His inner demons
continue to torment him. Lacking inspiration, he cannot
write. He thinks of the dear friend who died so suddenly.
Yet he must live out his time, as though life itself were a disease to
be patiently endured, in a world that is increasingly alien to him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.