Les tourmentes
Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
Belgium, France | 2014 | 77 min
World premiere
Language : French
Subtitle : English
On the plateau of Mont Lozère, a sequence of strange images unfolds. Herds of sheep in winter are accompanied by a mysterious figure. Menhirs tower skywards. Savage nature imposes silence. The voices withdraw into themselves, becoming inaudible. A visionary and mystical film that evokes the compassion of the world.
The beginning and the end. As in the Apocalypse. To be and to have been... On the plateau of Mont Lozère, a sequence of strange images unfolds. Herds of sheep in winter - white on white - are accompanied by a mysterious figure evoking the popular representation of death. Menhirs rising skywards. Savage nature imposes silence. The voices withdraw into themselves, becoming inaudible. Only one authority is felt, by articulating a medical discourse that establishes the standard. The bodies remain frozen in an infinity that is nameless and without history. Then blood flows over the stone. For the health of the world. Those who have gone astray come back to life. They are given names. Lost forever in a mass grave, the mental patients of Saint-Alban resurface, not like in a horror film, but as a result of a mystical and compassionate gaze. Once again, Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd gives a voice to those who have never had one. In his cinema, everything is lost, yet at the same time, nothing is lost. The principle of disappearance becomes the art of recollection. T.S. Eliot wrote: “Gentile or jew / O you who turn the wheel and look to windward / Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”
Luciano Barisone
