[CRITICAL] The AQUATIC EFFECT

Last posthumous film, of the filmmaker Solveig Anspach, unfortunately died of a cancer which she had told of the apparition in her first film, the autobiographical, the Top of the cores !, The AQUATIC EFFECT is not least a beautiful declaration of love to life, as absurd as it may be.

Samir (Samir Guesmi) is seduced at first sight when he crosses the road to Agathe (Florence Loiret-Caille), although the reciprocal is not true. The young crane operator falls away to the municipal swimming pool in Montreuil to take swimming lessons, inventing a trauma child to explain his inability to float. Without knowing it, he will put the finger in a gear that will force them to over-bid of lies, the more ridiculous the one than the other, not hesitating to follow Agatha, until the end of the world.

The AQUATIC EFFECT following this red thread, a pretext for gags that, beyond the laughter, husk the shells of his characters. Solveig Anspach filmed with tenderness these body disproportionate (very large, very small) floating in the water, their eyes crossing subtly under the surface before being masked by a myriad of bubbles of air escaped from their lungs. Samir is entangled in a shyness, he is fighting heroically out continually of her comfort zone. Agatha, she seems too sure of herself, wearing a hard face that will relax gradually as she becomes aware of the purity of the feelings of Samir.

“Absurd comedy and romance refreshing, the latest film by Solveig Anspach is home to characters whose fragility we touch”

Absurd comedy and romance refreshing, the latest film by Solveig Anspach is home to characters whose vulnerability touches us. The delicacy of this look is obviously reflected in the direction of the actors ofAnspach , but also, sometimes, in the cut. The succession plans at their first real exchange of points of view in the water reserves well to jump too quickly to the conclusion of an ordinary field-in contrast. The filmmaker takes the time to install the two characters in a plan that brings together profile. They will have the time to go back up twice to the surface to take breath, and dive again, until you get finally, this field-in contrast. Suddenly the banality of the process becomes a strength, because the expectation of the viewer for this convention has been put to the test, and has thus married the mechanics of desire started between Samir and Agathe.

In the same way, the desire of Samir is not translated in the image by a erotic body of Agatha, but by his attention to details that make it unique. The head dipped into the water, Samir notes that Agatha must stand on tiptoe, bringing his great body to him above the waterline. The master-swimmer did not quite walking distance, so she is a ballerina in the water.

The turning story that takes The AQUATIC EFFECT to its half (a reversal that changes the balance between the two protagonists) seems quite artificial… But regardless : it now follows the movie more for Samir and Agatha as to her storyline.

Rather than a mad laugh of 1h25, we will look for it in The AQUATIC EFFECT a pretext for the meeting of personalities that never the twain shall meet in the weightlessness of swimming pools. Relax and let yourself float.

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