#Jean Christophe Hym

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Misericordia (Miséricorde), Alain Guiraudie (2024)

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Juliette Binoche in Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2007)

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Hippolyte Girardot, Simon Iteanu, Fang Song, Louise Margolin, Anna Sigalevitch, Charles-Edouard Renault. Screenplay: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, François Margolin. Cinematography: Ping Bin Lee. Production design: Paul Fayard. Film editing: Jean-Christophe Hym, Ching-Sung Liao. 

The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956) is a short film that won the Oscar for best original screenplay, even though it's only a little over half an hour long and has only a few lines of spoken dialogue. In it, a boy (writer-director Lamorisse's young son, Pascal) on his way to school finds a large red balloon that has become caught in a lamppost. He soon discovers that he can't take the balloon with him on a bus or into his school, but the balloon is waiting for him after classes. He's also forbidden to bring the balloon into his home, but it floats up to his bedroom window and he lets it in. Over the next couple of days, the balloon tags along, sometimes getting the boy into trouble, until it's finally punctured by a rock fired from another boy's slingshot and slowly dies. Whereupon balloons from all over Paris flock to the boy, who gathers them and floats away over the rooftops. It's a small charmer, with ravishing views of 1950s Paris by cinematographer Edmond Séchan. The balloon becomes emblematic of childhood innocence in conflict with the daily grind of adulthood, which is why I think it still strikes a chord with audiences and, in the case of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, inspired an hommage: The Voyage of the Red Balloon. Hou's film, which he co-wrote with François Margolin, is nearly four times the length of Lamorisse's and doesn't have such a neatly symbolic resolution. In it, a boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu), lives with his mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), in a cramped Paris apartment. Suzanne is a puppeteer -- a profession that links her with childhood -- who hires a Chinese film student, Song (Fang Song), as a part-time nanny for Simon. Song is working on her own homage to The Red Balloon, and we see bits of it as she poses Simon with a balloon and films it floating around the city. But much of Hou's film deals with the domestic turmoil that surrounds Simon as Suzanne, a divorcee, tries to cope with juggling career and household problems. She leases part of the building to Marc (Hippolyte Girardot), who has been stiffing her on the rent and tends to pop into her apartment at odd times to use her kitchen and leave it a mess. She is trying to evict him so she'll have a place for her daughter, who lives with Suzanne's ex-husband in Brussels, to stay when she comes to Paris in the summer. Simon patiently endures his mother's frazzled nerves and finds a companion in Song, who quietly manages to bring a little order into the household. By film's end, nothing is really resolved in their lives, but a red balloon peeps into the apartment windows and floats above the skylight over Simon's bed, as if childhood has persisted for the time being against all the assaults against it. It's a poetic, meditative kind of film that gains its strength from immersing us into the lives of others. It seems to me to stretch out a little longer than it should, but it features another terrific performance by Binoche.

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Eros y Tánatos

Voluptuosidad, ternura, suspenso, policial, paisajes extraordinarios, todos estos elementos se encuentran presentes en El desconocido del lago (Alain Guiraudie, 2013), film notable que congrega magistralmente sentimientos tan complejos como el amor, el erotismo, la soledad, la locura, el miedo o la culpa.

Una playa gay nudista a la orilla de un lago francés será el escenario excluyente -no hay otro espacio en el film- para poner en escena el romance inquietante entre Franck y el presunto criminal Michelle pero también las relaciones sexuales y de poder entre los hombres que concurren al lugar. El lago en cuestión, si bien parece ser nada más un punto de promiscuidad y lujuria, exhibe también la interioridad de sus visitantes, sus modos de posicionarse ante el deseo carnal y la mirada como elemento para conectar con el otro. El trabajo sobre los cuerpos realizado por el director es fabuloso en tanto que no se limita a filmar genitales o escenas de sexo explícitas sino que la cámara recorta además distintos fragmentos corporales de los personajes que incluyen rostros deseantes, torsos mojados, personajes que se van desprendiendo de su ropa, actitudes de timidez o siluetas nadando, confiriendo al film un poder sensorial -sensual- poderoso, potente. El retrato del lugar, los encuadres hermosos al paisaje natural y la alternancia de secuencias resplandecientes con noches tenebrosas potencia esta textura casi táctil que prescinde incluso de cualquier sonido o música más allá de la voz de los personajes.

Bien dosificada en su trama -si bien hacia el desenlace puede tenerse una impresión de apresuramiento- el interjuego de poder/sumisión, amor/placer, amistad/soledad, deseo/culpa logra un resultado extraordinario que hace de El desconocido del lago una obra tan infrecuente como única.

* Proyectada en el ciclo “Retrospectiva Maurice Pialat + Sylvie Pialat, productora” en la Sala Lugones del Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires.

Por Gabriel Yurdurukian. 

Título original: L'inconnu du lac. Año: 2013. Duración: 97 min. País: Francia. Dirección: Alain Guiraudie. Guión: Alain Guiraudie. Fotografía: Claire Mathon. Montaje: Jean-Christophe Hym. Reparto: Pierre Deladonchamps, Christophe Paou, Patrick D'Assumçao, Jérôme Chappatte, Mathieu Vervisch, Gilbert Traina, Emmanuel Daumas

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Enormous (Énorme), Sophie Letourneur (2019)