Rather than a calling card or a rite of passage, the first feature film should be this place of emergences, where we dare everything. Few, in any case, have made as strong an impression as Black and white, graduation film by Claire Devers at Idhec and Troubled Pavilion of the Year 1986, automatically distinguished by a Camera d’Or at Cannes.
This incredibly bold first attempt by a young debutante, broadly inspired by a short story by Tennessee Williams (The Black Masseur, published in 1967), had for him to go to the end of his idea: to explore jouissance in its cogs and foundations, with a fresh look, freed from all influence like the usual clichés in the matter, which nevertheless do not lack . Having become almost impossible to find over time, the film returns to theaters in the new clothes of a restored copy.
What about pleasure at the turn of the 1980s? More buried and repressed than ever, if we are to believe the protagonist of Black and whiteAntoine (Francis Frappat), a shy and unimaginative accountant, who finds himself entrusted with the registers of a sports center equipped with the latest equipment – so many muscle machines that exalt the body, pushing it to exudation.
To better deal with irregularities, the owner (Marc Berman) invites the agent to also take advantage of the facilities and, why not, the services of a house masseur. Reluctant at first, the man of numbers hands over his white, forbidden body to the dark, expert hands of Dominique (Jacques Martial), a West Indian masseur who kneads him without reserve, like good dough. The harshness of the contact jostles Antoine, but it also opens up something in him: access to an unsuspected desire, nestled in the recesses of pain, and therefore essentially masochistic. Every evening, he returns to the cabin and engages in ever more hard-hitting friction.
Story of a revelation
Black and white thus tells the story of a revelation, then of a complicity between the two men sharing the same secret, this device which brings them together and gradually becomes essential to them, to the point of taking up all the space. Most of the time, Claire Devers deals less with the ritual itself than with its side effects and its repercussions on everyday life, which is turned upside down and soon swept away. Concerned massages, she prefers to hear slapping and rattling, maintaining the exercise of violence off-screen.
Concerned massages, Claire Devers prefers to hear slaps and groans, maintaining the exercise of violence off-screen
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