[critical] THE BATTLE OF SOLFERINO

May 6, 2012, Solferino. Laetitia, a tv journalist, is covering the presidential election. But landed Vincent, the ex, to see their daughters. Girls raging, baby-sitter, overwhelmed, lover vaguely incrust, lawyer misanthrope, France cut in two : it is Sunday, everything is complicated, nothing goes !

Author’s Note

[rating:8/10]

• Original title : The Battle of Solferino

• Achievement : Justine Triet

• Scenario : Justine Triet

• Main actors : Laetitia Dosch, Vincent Macaigne, Arthur Harari, Virgil Vernier

• Country of origin : France

• Output : September 18, 2013

• Duration : 1h40min

• Trailer :

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A little over a year after the election of François Hollande as French president, Justine Triet fate of his film. The story takes place on one day. Not entirely, because the action starts to the midi – 13h. But regardless of the exact time, because the day ends in a nightmare. The young filmmaker made like his friends of his generation, and we released a movie social, with a little bit of politics. A split family, this will necessarily entail some problems. A film that oscillates between social drama and comedy.

In fact, Justine Triet doesn’t hesitate to mix the two tones. In spite of the catastrophic situation that surrounds each of the characters (at different levels), there are touches of humor. The strength of this mixing of tones is that the filmmaker is able to conjugate it to describe an action. When Vincent Macaigne maltreating the dog of Arthur Harari, the gestures are funny, but the idea is dramatic. And it is this alliance that will show that Justine Triet wants, above all, touching all the emotions of the viewer.

Except that some of the scenes are excessive. The last scene where Vincent Macaigne, Arthur Harari are in the bar and laugh at the waitress, the viewer can only laugh. Here, plan sequence with fixed camera. This proves that Justine Triet prefers to let his actors do the show, and it is so much better. Because the freedom of the actors allows for a better performance, in the spontaneity and the improvisation. Vincent Macaigne in wear throughout the film. Especially when he will go buy flowers, or when it will blow on the wand of the tube to soap bubbles.

By contrast, Justine Triet, will be more conventional when it comes to filming the drama scenes. When one of the little girls wakes up and is crying in her bed alone, the plan sets the close-on she is like an onion that one peels under your nose. In addition, when she decides to shoot Laetitia Dosch from walking the dog late at night, the camera shaking does not see properly the face of the actress. As well, the terms inner can not get out. And when the filmmaker decides to put his actress in the crowd for the journalist, it alternates between shots with his camera, and then shooting with the camera to the tv. Except that this does nothing.

The viewer feels the drama, that’s for sure. But Justine Triet will not do the necessary with his camera to build on the atmosphere that it wants. Too much focus on the social dimension of his film, it forgets the epic side that could come out. The victory of left-wing activists, followed by the breakages in the streets of Paris, mixed with the story of the divorced couple who fights all day, could provide an epic socio-political. But here we are stopped at the simple speech carried by the film.

Justine Triet to catch up very well on the form she gives to her film. It manages to link documentary and fiction with a transparency impressive, As Pablo Larrain has managed to be consistent by mixing archival images in documentary and fiction with No, as Justine Triet turns fiction into reality. Fiction and documentary are not differentiated at the assembly, they are nested one in the other. And it is here that the film takes on its full meaning. It is believed from the outset in this story of love in the image of a fact various.

Because this film is neither more nor less than a love story. Where Rebecca Zlotowski has described love as a cancellation that is placed on our skin (in Grand Central, with Tahar Rahim and Léa Seydoux), Justine Triet speaks of love gone. A love that has evaporated, but still cause problems. The filmmaker films the brothel after the break. It is, therefore, a film that alternates between hysteria and calmness. As a kind of ghost train that could explode at any moment, because the intrusion of the chronic intimate in the excitement of collective acts as a social insecurity.

Most importantly, it all fucking intimate in the explosion collective is to be considered as one of the actors. Vincent Macaigne is equal to himself, he understood that a character is above all funny and dramatic by its attitudes, by putting his body to the test. We have already seen, under the direction of Guillaume Brac and that of Antonin Peretjatko, and it confirms its wide range of game. Vincent Macaigne, the great French actor of the moment ? At his side, Laetitia Dosch, who gives himself body and soul to her character, showing the shades of your game and that it can have. Remains Arthur Harari and Virgil Vernier, making the necessary.