Impressionist cocktail Claude Sote's element is private life. The one that is tightly sealed from strangers with dense curtains is closed on the cunning bolts of custom-made doors. He's attracted to the private, the hidden. What is not advertised is not displayed. And not because it is not comme il faut – in the blackness of the director is not exactly blamed. There is another reason: it is difficult to find the right intonation to clearly tell about the most intimate. What happens in your home, in your bedroom, in your memories.
The director here, of course, is not a pioneer. He inherits the tenacious French tradition of dissecting vague, subtle feelings and sensations. Predecessors have already made this path, leaving, however, some secret paths unexplored. For example, Françoise Sagan, who, although she presented the theme under a different, slightly more spicy and spicy sauce, still caught capricious fame as a singer of a chamber world, reliably hidden from prying eyes. Sote is also looking at him closely. However, in a different angle, which is not surprising for a filmmaker. And after the shock of the student revolution, when the French repulsed the full social guarantees for many decades to come, the appeal to the underwater part of the iceberg can be called natural.
The film does a lot of detail. The camera travels from a graphic picture pinned to the wall to a hair curl carelessly tucked behind the ear by a woman's hand. Take it all away - a good half of the screen space will go into oblivion. Everything is almost tangible here... Not an ounce of provocateur, the director brings to the forefront not rebels, not petrels of the revolution, about whom it is so good to tell and film. The title character is a kind of runner of the autumn marathon, only in a bourgeois way: Pierre Bernard, a respectable architect, rushes between a beautiful lover and an equally charming wife, unable to choose who is more important to him. We have people whose habituality, if desired, can be measured by a ruler. Middle-aged people. But in the bins of the director himself there is no sarcasm or neglect (at the age of 46, only those who did not grow out of a school coat can mock the usual). He only observes that the predictability to which others so eagerly strive, driving life into a stuffed faux bird, is impossible. After all, even the car accident that caught Pierre, and she emerged from the chaos of chance.
Sote is fascinated by the hidden mechanisms of reality, its secret springs. Hence the interest in close-up and middle plans: a face in a half-bear, a hand, nervously clutching a cigarette. There is always soft, smooth lighting, and the darkness is drowsy and smells of home comfort. Only closer to the end, everything on the screen falls into the area of blinding light. And only for a short moment, because it is impossible to withstand longer. The narrative itself is a stream of consciousness: memories are nested in each other like dolls. The director seems to infiltrate the hero’s head, taking a place in the stalls. Time is compressed to fractions of a second or turns into sticky minutes, and we see how slowly and slowly rolled along the dusty road wrinkled wheel. And we look through the eyes of the hero, and we hear for him: the ambulance siren transforms into the sound of a flute, then into the noise of the sea, which greedily absorbs all life. And we understand that before they show a sign akin to the metro “no exit”, various nonsense will come to mind: shutters that need to be repaired, a broken oval table with an old house ...
There's a nerve in "The Little Ones," a hidden tension. But no decadence. Here, with true French hedonism, one admires life and its components, and there is nothing that would seem excessive, too expressive. Only to convey the essence without inventing anything or perverting. If you get close enough, the eyes move towards the nose, and nothing is clear: some color spots. Step away - individual puzzles immediately crystallize into a general image. Yes, it's definitely impressionism, a favorite French invention.
Claude Sote was not from a legion of celebrities who, having flashed a supernova in the sky of cinema, then disappear without a trace. He's not a sprinter - a styer who stubbornly walked his way. His theme is a little sun in cold water. Fragments of happiness, chaotically scattered throughout life. Such a cocktail, where a little warmth, a little disappointment. And drink it slowly, savoring every sip.