THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
From the ramshackle mythologies of the American South, a certain documentary cinema likes to make its honey, as there is no lack of cursed characters, those who sweat fiction through all the pores of their skin. It is precisely these damned souls that have fascinated Nicolas Peduzzi, actor and documentary filmmaker, since his first feature film Southern Belle (2018), devoted to the heiress of a Texan oil magnate.
His next film, which was part of the Acid 2021 selection, comes straight out of the thigh of Southern Belle, since he is partly attached to his cousin Will, a deprived offspring wandering between music and his addictions to opiates. To this portrait is added another, not in mirror, but as adjacent: that of Alexandra, better known by her stage name “OMB Bloodbath”, a lesbian rapper with a past as a gang leader whose career is beginning to take off. . Neither is the real subject of the film, which lies rather between the two: namely the city of Houston, its emanations, its electricity, with its biblical airs of Sodom where each destiny takes an eschatological turn. .
nebulous progress
From the city, Ghost Song surveys the access roads, sails freely between dog and wolf, captures the shady gleams and the phosphorescences, between dinners anonymous, strip sealskaraoke clubs, shabby hotel rooms, and the disused Third Ward district, the stronghold where Bloodbath hangs out with his cronies.
Without a backbone, the film works on a nebulous progression. A flurry fueled by the scents of screwthat typical codeine rap from Houston to the « instrumentals slowed down five times then minced »at times mixed with the furious “Dies irae” of the Requiem by Verdi. It sometimes happens that Peduzzi mounts the real “in mayonnaise”, by multiplying the omens of Apocalypse around its characters: thus the hurricane which threatens to strike becomes a biblical deluge, the city a capital of vice, the escapades of its fauna a picture of sins. An iconography that the characters do not hesitate to recycle themselves, Will sometimes posing as a preacher skinned alive.
The most beautiful scenes are those that take place over time, because then something can happen, go off the rails. Like this one where Will and his wealthy uncle wash their dirty laundry as a family, but above all on guitar and singing, improvising face to face and in turn the verses and responses of a song of expiation. So, something of the myth is embodied in the astonishing closeness that Peduzzi maintains with the beings whose stupefaction and confusion his camera accompanies.
You have 1.84% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.