Un caprice d`enfant How to love if you are not loved, but you cannot stop? How to explain when the mind of the listener is hopelessly clouded by a prejudice about his rightness? How to live if every day you bitterly realize that the person most dear to you will forever remain a stranger?
The answer is probably one: try. And maybe one day something will change.
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Maivenne le Besco is not well known outside the French-speaking civilization. Our average viewer at best seems to have seen her in second or third roles somewhere, and the most progressive audience could casually notice her recent project Poliss. However, at home, she is considered perhaps the most scandalous and bright cultural figure of the new millennium. First of all, thanks to her numerous newspaper and screen sessions of total psychological exhibitionism on the theme “My childhood”.
The essence of the story is unsurprising, and not particularly original. From a very young age, the mother, a failed actress, dragged Maivenn through the castings, trying to realize at least “through” the child. After some time, the parents separated and the phase of beatings on both sides moved from the format of situational punishments to the format of removing any negative on the offspring. The result is a complete break with the family at 15, the rejection of his own surname, daughter by Luc Besson at 16 and psychological trauma for the rest of his life. And even after a series of extremely unpleasant revelations in the interview, when people have already convinced that there are not just skeletons in the closet, but the closet itself is built of bones, the resentment continued to boil, not finding a full solution.
Suddenly, such a welcome outlet was autobiographical creativity. Having created a successful solo performance “Nute” in 2003 and playing the role of her own parents, Ms. le Besco finally gained not only a more worthy fame, but also the opportunity, if not to tear out of herself, then at least to calm down the demons of the past. Therefore, her next psychotherapeutic exercise did not take long to wait: three years later, the film “Forgive Me” was released on the screens of France – a bitter and almost hopeless confession of an unhappy girl who, on the threshold of the fourth decade, still cannot find herself and decides to open spiritual abscesses.
Of course, the fable affects her - only the name has been changed. Violetta learns of her pregnancy and decides that the baby should be born “in the truth.” So she buys a video camera and goes to her relatives to make a documentary, filming everything, right down to going to the toilet. The fire "Rec." burns - and the heroine bombards her father and mother with inconvenient questions, arranges an evening of confessions at a family dinner in the spirit of Winterberg's "Celebration", fakes mockery of herself before the perpetrators ... Not sparing them, not themselves, not the child in his own womb. Just for a word from someone she wasn't so lucky to love. "Sorry..."
The picture is clearly autobiographical, given the presence of documentary records of the young Maivenn, that there may even be some misunderstanding, bordering on indignation: why make millions of people witness someone else’s personal history that does not concern them? Now, what if a director can't do otherwise, if she doesn't have a cure for her inner pain, and what if it's anyone who's going to start a family or has already started a family? After all, we are not talking about some yellow-page details of the “life of others”, from which only complete voyeurs grumble. This story contains an experience that can make some educators a little better, demonstrating to them that responsibility for their actions is not an empty phrase.
The camera actually plays a triple role. It is no coincidence that it works purely in black and white mode, it is like a portal to a world where there is no ambiguity and hypocrisy and where the truth is seen instantly. This is a kind of “tool maniac”, who returned to avenge everyone for his past – Violetta at times and really looks like a brutal sadist, selflessly trampling relatives into the dirt in front of the lens. Finally, this is an allusion to the documentary nature of the film itself, which could well have been the result of such an experiment if real relatives of Le Besco had agreed to participate in it - it is not for nothing that it was shot in the style of Dogma 95 with its ultimate realism.
But what is the evolution of the heroine and her prototype? One can understand the situation: the once downtrodden “I” has now turned to its fullest and is trying to catch up with huge doses of militant egocentrism. And Violetta-Mayvenn is filming his film not for the future child, but for herself - or rather for the child she once was. And yet, is there any use in this moral torture of everyone and everything, does it lead to anything, or is it just a path of total destruction? Through the mouth of an on-screen doctor, the author herself gives an answer to herself and the audience: no, we will not make people dear to us love us more than they can; no, there will be no apologies, because few people have the strength not to be crusty in their social role.
But we are who we are because we were raised by these people. Bad or good. Out of love or hatred, thanks to or in spite of them, we have become ourselves. At least for that they can be forgiven a lot. Not all. But enough so that it does not poison our lives. For only by making peace with our demons can we keep them away from those whose lives now depend on us.
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I'm trying.