THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
French cinema is always a little embarrassed when it comes to filming work when it is not a simple physical effort, but a reality straddling the concrete and the abstract. It is this beautiful, difficult challenge that As long as the sun is beating, who immerses himself in an environment rarely (if ever) surveyed in cinema, landscape design. Philippe Petit, for whom this is his first feature film, does so through Max, a landscape architect haunted by a project he is carrying out at arm’s length and dreams of seeing come to fruition: a wild garden planted in the heart of the city center of a large metropolis (Marseille is recognizable), accessible at any time of the day and night, a small green oasis where local residents can finally reclaim the space and stroll in the middle of the urban noise.
Accompanied by his urban planner friend, Max puts his last hopes in an architectural competition; that they will lose. After this umpteenth failure, everything seems to encourage him to abandon this project to take the much safer paths of pragmatism: it is moreover the Devil who presents himself to him, in the guise of a renowned architect who offers to come and work on a private garden project on behalf of a VIP.
As long as the sun is beating inserts the eternal dilemma between idealism and pragmatism into the heart of a daily framework, not unlike The Tree, the mayor and the media library (1993), by Eric Rohmer, who chose town planning as the best means of succeeding in filming ideas.
Mephistophelic architect
Like Rohmer, Philippe Petit tackles his issue without grandiosity, observing whether an ideal dissolves in the magma of ordinary disillusions or whether it resists it. He captures the temptation to renounce, the Faustian pact as it happens to all of us – without fanfare. It’s always in the middle of all the things to do in a day that you end up giving up an idea. All it takes is a moment of absence for Max to get caught up in basely practical considerations, the comfort of food jobs, the money to bring in, the small family to support, his partner who becomes pregnant again.
So that this framework usually vibrates as much, Philippe Petit (an actor himself) offers a lot of leeway to his actors: Grégoire Oestermann – the sophistication made man – in the role of the Mephistophelian and nevertheless understanding architect; Sarah Adler as a companion who takes up the challenge of imposing her presence and her desires in a handful of scenes. Djibril Cissé, as an unexpected guest, who anchors Max’s trajectory a little more in a very plausible reality. Finally, Swann Arlaud, whom the camera does not leave with a sole, an arrow of pugnacity which crosses each sequence with an infinite flexibility of play – precise, alert, extremely good. Here father, husband; there, a dreamy boy who paces up and down in his place like one surveys a dream draft, fomenting strategies with his team near an Algeco which serves as his HQ.
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