"Pédé" sounds from the black screen in the first seconds - the French short form for "Päderast", which is used derogatory for gays. The "Schwuchtel" is the filmmaker himself, the Swiss Stéphane Riethauser, born in 1972.
In the first shot, you see him jokingly disguised as a teenager as a television announcer in a purple leopard outfit - years before he admitted his sexual orientation to himself.
The next shot goes even further: his father captures him on vacation with a telephoto lens. A patch in the form of a large orange adult hand is emblazoned on the back of the little boy's green terry trunks like a sarcastic commentary on what has just been heard. This is a basic principle of Riethauser's debut film: Private recordings are given a second level of meaning retrospectively, be it comic, tragic or simply revealing.
photo gallery
6 pictures
"Madame": learning from the oldIt is thanks to Riethauser's privileged growing up that he had so much visual material from his own life at all - because "Madame" plays to a large extent at a time when no cell phones were still taking pictures suitable for cinema. As the son of a Geneva entrepreneur with his own cinematic ambitions, his life was extensively banned to Super-8 from an early age. As a teenager, his grandmother gave him his first video camera.
That grandmother founded the family's prosperity and is the second main character of "Madame". Through its history, Riethauser's film is lifted out of the context of the sometimes tiring self-discovery narratives, which are also becoming increasingly popular in the documentary genre. As a narrative trick, he created his film as a posthumous audiovisual letter to the family patriarch who died 15 years ago. "Be aware that what I'm going to say is falsified by what I won't say, what I haven't filmed, forgot, misrepresented or deliberately omitted," he writes to his beloved grandma - but of course he means his Spectator.
Caroline is introduced as a conservative old lady who compares her grandson - albeit mischievously - to Notre Dame's bell ringer because of his wild hairstyle. But Riethauser continually corrects this initial picture in the course of his film: It turns out that Caroline, early in her life, opposed expectations of what was appropriate and appropriate for a woman.
"Madame"
Switzerland 2019
Written and directed by Stephane Riethauser
Distribution: Salzgeber & Company Medien
Length: 94 minutes
FSK: from 12 years
Start: December 12, 2019
She withdrew from marriage at a very young age, a marriage without love, early through divorce. Single parent and without child support, she first made her way as a hairdresser until she became wealthy, among other things, with the sale of corsets for a wealthy clientele. She was one of the first women in Geneva to own and drive a car. Later in life she discovered the arts for herself - and at 83 she began to paint.
Stéphane's history of emancipation, on the other hand, was one that had to be fought less against society than against one's own internalized heteronormative gender norms. Until he was a student, Riethauser refused to really accept his own homosexuality. As president of the local law student association, he advocated various conservative to right-wing issues. It is sometimes painful to look at and hear how, as a teenager, he compensated for his own fears of lack of masculinity with the degradation of women.
This may also explain why Riethauser sometimes shows a convert's sense of purpose in his film. He does not miss the chance to have the camera roamed through carefully draped gender theory readers and books by Simone de Beauvoir and Arthur Dreyfus right from the start. In his voice-over, he shows himself to be their learned student.
In the video: The trailer for "Madame"
Edition Salzgeber
It is all the nicer that he leaves the last minutes to his grandmother and largely does without the voice-over. In the last shot, the old lady drives her e-wheelchair ("Mein Rolls") briskly through a Geneva alley and greets passers-by with a short hand movement like a queen.
