If many pieces have been successfully brought to the cinema, the opposite exercise turns out to be more perilous.
At the Festival d'Avignon, a Brazilian director blurs the boundaries with an adaptation of
Dogville
by Lars von Trier soaked in the situation in her native country.
For Christiane Jatahy, who works between Brazil and Europe and who had already mentioned exile and the acceptance of the other in 2019 in Avignon (
The present which overflows
), the porous line between the two arts is a brand.
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In
Dogville
(2003), which tells through a minimal setting the story of Grace, a fugitive taking refuge in a mining town where she is first accepted and then exploited, the Danish director “wanted to have an experience close to the theater. and transpose it to the cinema. Me is the opposite, ”says Christiane Jatahy in an interview with AFP before the premiere of
Entre Chien et Loup on
Monday.
“I am very interested in the boundaries between theater and cinema, but the better to erase them. And I use the cinema as an important part in the construction of the dramaturgy, ”
adds the director, who is also a director, who has already adapted“ La Règle du jeu ”by Jean Renoir at the Comédie-Française.
The young outsider woman embodied on the screen by Nicole Kidman is camped on stage by the Brazilian Julia Bernat, a choice which is not trivial since the character, renamed Gracia, fled a regime turning to fascism, a very direct allusion to the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Gracia takes refuge with a theater company that challenges itself to replay
Dogville
with the aim of avoiding its brutal end.
“You don't have a lot of time to get accepted,”
he is told.
As in the film, the characters are held in good spirits until the arrival of
"fake news"
concerning Gracia on their cellphones (in the film, these are wanted notices from the police) change their behavior, going until exploitation and rape.
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Either a mise en abyme sometimes confusing and which left the criticism mixed, some believing that this remake fell flat or did not bring much in comparison with the film, despite the ingenious visual device.
The scene looks more like a film set with a giant screen at the back of the set on which are projected the images filmed by a camera manipulated by the actors in turn, but also images already filmed and edited which are superimposed on it.
Alike
Scenes from the film are repeated, almost identically, on the screen and on the set.
“I play on the question of time, on the illusion of cinema and the transparency of the theater. How can we change the past? This is the cinema. The theater, which is in the present moment, can change the future, ”
assures Ms. Jatahy, who is an associate artist at the Théâtre de l'Odéon and at the Centquatre in Paris as well as at the Schauspielhaus in Zürich. Because unlike the film which ends with a crescendo of horror, the play ends before Gracia's vengeance, like a message of hope.
"I show both sides because we have the chance now to change things, even if reality shows the opposite,
" says the director.
“Fascism threatens the other but it threatens us ourselves. When it happens, it is a destructive thought, it is very linked to the situation in Brazil where the rights that we have won with a lot of effort are restricted, it is very extreme, ”she
adds.
"Talking about solidarity through shows is not a question of good feelings because it is the very essence of Humanity"
, insists the artist whose show will tour in France, Switzerland, Spain , in Italy and in Belgium.