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© New story
La Bouche de Jean-Pierre
Lucile Hadzihalilovic
1996 - France - 52mn
Screenings :
thursday 26 - 7:30 pm - 400 Coups - 5 - presented by Lucile Hadzihalilovic
After Mimi is a powerless witness to her mother's attempted suicide, Aunt Solange takes the young girl to live with her for a time. But Solange is a bit obsessive. Everything has its place. Mimi's is in a corner near the door. But on her very first evening, the girsl's sleep is disturbed by the arrival of Jean-Pierre, Solange's new boyfriend.
La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (Jean-Pierre's Mouth) is Lucile Hadzihalilovic's cult first film. Shot in a housing project in the Paris region, on a shoestring budget, hit with financial problems which slowed production more than once, then selected by the Cannes Film Festival and the Angers Premiers Plans Film Festival, it has become also impossible to see a screening of this film. The Festival is happy to give you an opportunity to rediscover La Bouche de Jean Pierre in a new restored version. “Lucile Hadzihalilovic paints the portrait of an introverted young girl, a victim of the incestuous desire of her “uncle” and silent witness to the moral breakdown of a certain France. Like Gaspar Noé (the film's cameraman), Hadzihalilovic embraces the principles of the fable to tell her story. The indistinct time and place (the panel “Today in France” serves as an introduction, the final moral, the omnipresent symbols, La Bouche de Jean-Pierre responds to the criteria of the fable. A sort of Alice figure (she reads Lewis Carroll's book throughout the film), immersed in a sordid everyday world, a maladapted misfit in her foster family, Mimi suffers from the world of adults, with their perversions and their cruelty. The face of actress Sandra Sammartino, a symbol of innocence faced with unheard of brutality (pornographic images, molestation, isolation) is astounding. Her apparent impassibility nevertheless shows a broad range of emotions, the same which grip the audience in the face of the monstrous spectacle of the abandonment of a child”. (Ursula Michel; Critikat)
CAST AND CREW
Cast : Sandra Sammartino, Denise Aron-Schropfer, Michel Trillot, Delphine Allange, Jacques Gallo
Screenplay : Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Cinematography : Dominique Colin, Gaspar Noé
Editing : Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Music : Loic Da Silva, Philippe Mallier, John Milko, François Roy
Production : Full Moon, Les Cinémas de la Zone
French distributor : New Story