THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – TO SEE
It doesn’t take much for us to infantilize “our little old people”find them cute and suspect them of losing their minds, of driving dangerously, of being too fragile for this or that, and even out of breath… To escape preconceived ideas about senility and make the voices of those mainly concerned heard, Bavarian-born filmmaker Claus Drexel, who also worked in fiction, set off on the roads of France to meet many of them.
They are aged from 80 to just over 100 years old, live in Alsace, Brittany, the Basque Country, Auvergne, Corrèze, Cantal, the Cévennes, the Alps, Corsica, come from all walks of life: a baron, former fishermen, miners, farmers, shipyard workers… From these meetings over the days Drexel and his small team bring back intimate portraits, captured in still shots, in each person’s living spaces, at home or in nursing homes. Sitting in their living room or in their bedroom, most often alone, but also in couples or with friends, the participants share bits of their journey, states of mind, thoughts that constitute the ” selected pieces “ of the Old.
However simple it may be, this frontal device gives birth, with impressionist touches, to a vibrant human comedy which speaks of old age and the strong moments of a life. There are the messy ones, the maniacs, the sophisticated ones, the nostalgic ones, the “up to date”the foresighted… “I bought a “suicide, instructions for use” on the docks, but the medicines no longer exist”said one. “If I could put my head on legs, I would run like a goat”, dreams of a nonagenarian whose sagacity overturns the appearances held in a “still life” staging (still camera and seated protagonists). Of Jewish faith, a former lecturer, left alone after her family’s roundup, she thanks the gesture of a man who came to shake her hand the first day she wore the yellow star and remembers his words: “Mademoiselle, I am ashamed of being French. » ” The warshe says, that’s the only important thing. The rest is fiction. »
A stylized setting
While our elders are made invisible by our societies centered on productivism and profit, each person’s memories, often pictorial, give this French road trip the dimension of a collective history, with its semantic, social, political evolutions, over the course of decades. Many talk about 39-45, describe loneliness – to differentiate from “Isolation… it’s fatal!” », explains one of them –, question their usefulness, giving food for thought. If the film sometimes has the effect of a tutorial on “advice for living better”, delivered by good people – no pettiness here – we willingly watch the past mingle with the future to consider the future in light of experience. A couple says they opened a community center to keep disadvantaged young people busy in the summer, after being robbed by them. Heroes who don’t hold grudges, then. “Uniformity does not create unity”philosophizes another.
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