Pays : USA
Genre : Drame
Durée : 2h02
Date de sortie : Prochainement
Avec : Rosemarie DeWitt, Emory Cohen, Michael Stuhlbarg...
Réalisateur : Antonio CAMPOS
Robert, étudiant américain dans un prestigieux cours préparatoire de la côte Est, filme par hasard la mort tragique de deux camarades de classe. Leurs vies deviennent le sujet d’un projet audiovisuel conçu par la direction pour accélérer le processus de deuil collectif. Mais ce projet crée une atmosphère de paranoïa et de malaise parmi les étudiants et les enseignants.
(L'avis exprimé par les rédacteurs de cette rubrique est indépendant du travail et des choix du Jury oecuménique.)
18 mai 2008
An accomplished film by 24 year old Antonio Campos who had made a number of short films, including Buy Me Now, which received some international commercial release. This first feature film is much more ambitious.
We are in a privileged school (and the director draws on his own experience – and includes his own preoccupations in his central character) with some old-fashioned stances and regulations. However, Robert is a serious, rather introverted boy who likes looking at YouTube kinds of clips, some realistic, some violent and many pornographic. He is a friend to his more outgoing roommate, David.
All students have to be involved in an afterschool sport or project and he chooses video.
However, his life becomes more complicated as he is attracted to Amy, one of the students, is aware of drug-dealing in the school and comes across twins who are dying through drug trouble. This haunts him. Part of his afterschool work is to make a tribute in video to the two girls but his teacher lambastes his efforts (it has no music !) and a more respectful and sentimental video is made and shown to the school.
Robert is tense, fights with his roommate, is tested by the counsellor and warned by the principal. What will his future be ? Which is where we are left. But, the picture of this school life, the characters and their immaturity and development are worth seeing. The film is measured in it style – Campos says he does not like hand-held intrusive camera techniques. He says he tends to see life as in a composed frame. This gives them film a calmer and deeper atmosphere.
