What art steals from life, what everyday life abandons to fiction. Taking place behind closed doors of a masterclass, Le cours de la vie sees Agnès Jaoui give a disturbing and poignant lesson in cinema. In Frédéric Sojcher's film released this Wednesday, the actress plays a screenwriter who came to give a lecture in the film school run by her childhood sweetheart. Noémie has not seen Vincent since their breakup almost 30 years ago. A promising director, he finally did not shoot, choosing instead to take the reins of the École nationale supérieure de l'audiovisuel in Toulouse.
In front of a reluctant audience and a bit mocking (students do not appreciate losing a day of editing in class), Noémie will try to give them the keys to a successful script and plot. A challenge that passes above all by observing the moments of everyday life and even the most tenuous emotions that run through it. Through this praise of the "What if?" of alternate reality, it is also a little of her past and her wounds that Noémie reveals. Perhaps the opportunity for Vincent (Jonathan Zaccai of the Bureau of Shaggy and Subjugated Legends) to understand the reasons for their separation and bury the hatchet and turn the page.
After a first half hour didactic and too talkative, The course of life finds its momentum, its subtext and its tenderness. In the arid setting of a lecture, the faces of the students and the piercing eyes of Noémie lead into a maelstrom of possibilities and unspoken. Cameras that capture wholesale, medium or wide plane capture the slightest flutter.
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A filigree self-portrait
Belgian film teacher, Frédéric Sojcher, did not take the easy way out by adopting the essay by his friend and counterpart Alain Layrac, Atelier d'écriture: Fifty tips for a successful screenplay without missing your life. Deciding to respect the unity of place and time of classical tragedies. Beyond its ode to the cathartic power of the 7th art capable of rewriting reality, of concretizing all the second chances of a stroke of the pen, this portrait of a woman without regret, facing a man drowning in them, invites to grasp his emotions, to refuse boxes and labels. Like the reunion between Noémie and Vincent.
They borrow as much from the blowback as from the mea culpa. Do we forget only those we once loved? From these ashes, from these unlived lives, springs the adult that one becomes. Actress, director and screenwriter, Agnès Jaoui has put a lot of her (feminist commitment, the meanders of the human psyche, self-mockery) in her character and the feature film, says Frédéric Sojcher. In his melancholic look, often lost in memories, in his evocation of the burning emptiness left behind by the deceased, it is difficult not to see the shadow of his former companion, the late Jean-Pierre Bacri. Moving and delicate.