Valéry Rosier
Belgium, France | 2013 | 52 min
Language : French
Subtitle : English

“Radio Puisaleine” broadcasts to the Picardy countryside, creating a social link that is vital yet threatened with extinction. The old songs that it plays allow listeners to relive the happy times of their past and share them with others. Valéry Rosier films her characters with great sensitivity, letting them shine with rays of musical sunshine that pierce through their loneliness.

The crackling of old songs resonates through a small town in Picardy, helping the listeners of “Radio Puisaleine”, whose presenters are volunteers of all ages, to forget that their best years are gone and it may already be too late. Valéry Rosier, whose short film Dimanches drew attention at Cannes in 2011, has transformed this first work into Silence radio. It is a documentary constructed like a work of fiction, its poignant and comical sketches transfiguring, through the use of parallel editing, the mundane lives of people striving to evade their shared sense of loneliness. Rosier subtly captures a nod of the head, a gaze lost in the distance, damaged bodies whose very existence depends on these musical vibrations in which their memories, scars and hopes are wrapped up. When the transmitter is temporarily shut down for maintenance, it feels like death in a community suddenly overwhelmed by white noise. But the grim reaper will have to wait, since the beloved tunes come back, bringing with them a chance to linger a while longer on the shores of pleasure.

Emmanuel Chicon

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