we, spectators of our lives at the cinema

FRANCE INTER – ON DEMAND – PODCAST

First of all, warn: listening to this podcast presents a risk. That of seeing yourself start it only to find yourself, nine hours later, completely galvanized and with a crazy desire to (re)see certain films mentioned, and it doesn’t matter whether you are a movie buff or not.

Or Christine Masson, co-producer of the show “On aura tout vu”, on France Inter. To light up The Night of the 12th (2022), by Dominik Moll (story of an unresolved investigation into feminicide, widely rewarded at the 2023 Césars), she invites Jean-Michel Lemoine, criminal boss in Brussels. The latter confides to him that he felt a great closeness with this fictional cop: “It’s like I’m on film!” »

From there, the desire to delve deeper into the subject and broaden it to other professions with, in the background, a few extracts from emblematic films (Christine Masson will admit to having rewatched seventy of them for the occasion!), and some essential questions: “What do we look for in a film? Another reading of our lives? And how are we represented by what most often defines us: our profession? »

Documentary value

It’s the cops who open the series. While we hear extracts from Headquarters (1947), by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and Jail (1981), by Claude Miller, Jean-Michel Lemoine evokes the “documentary power” of L.627 (1992), by Bertrand Tavernier. Deputy chief of staff of the central direction of the judicial police, Sandrine Desliard says she does not find herself in American films, in particular because the procedures are too different from those which exist in France. No more than in Claude Zidi’s comedy (Crooked cops1984), “because this state of police corruption does not reflect my experience”she assures.

In the next episode, the three teachers interviewed will return to The Schoolmaster (1981), by Claude Berri, and Between the walls (2008), by Laurent Cantet, when the third episode, on doctors, largely invokes the films of Thomas Lilti (Country doctor, First year And Hippocrates). If the anesthetist-resuscitator Arnaud Chiche speaks of the most beautiful profession in the world, he questions, on the other hand, the capacity of these films to arouse vocations, as what is shown is, objectively, not very desirable. Undesirable or unrealistic, such as The Aries Family (2014), the film by Eric Lartigau, which the farming family interviewed in the following episode gently makes fun of.

Moreover, what is disturbing and common to all the episodes is the extent to which both love films not first or even mainly as a fictional object whose artistic gesture should be saluted (or not). , but for their realism, their documentary value. Difficult in this sense for the great reporter Nicolas Poincaré to find a feature film which manages to convey the expectation which is also the lot of journalists.

Workers, writers, judges

Episode 6 is dedicated to workers, who find films that represent them too rare. After the writers Lola Lafon and Tanguy Viel (episode 7), Pascal Gand, who chairs the organized crime correctional chamber in Marseille, chose Twelve angry men (1957), by Sidney Lumet, In the name of the Italian people (1971), by Dino Risi, and Good Causes (1963), by Christian-Jaque, to recall some fundamentals: an investigating judge spends a lot of time studying the files, and, “it’s true, it’s quite an overflowing passion.”

After the judges and the lawyers, the last episode summons two filmmakers: Michel Hazanavicius and Rebecca Zlotowski. The latter chose to evoke The Exterminating Angels (2006), by Jean-Claude Brisseau, who was his teacher. For her, this film is “a pro domo plea which comments on the conviction of which the director was the victim in 2005 [pour le harcèlement sexuel de deux jeunes actrices] “.

At the time of a “collective awareness of the violence and predation that can occur on a set”, she questions with rare intellectual honesty: “What is this zone in which there can be the desire for actors and actresses to be part of a project and what is the positioning of a director who could abuse it? (…) I have the feeling, as a spectator, that he is telling the truth about his work. »

And so, as soon as we have finished “bingeing” this fascinating podcast in which everyone, under the guise of commenting on the films, speaks openly, we begin to dream of a season 2: “I was on the show. »