Noëmie Lvovsky

In the last few years, no film
has touched my heart like Noëmie Lvovsky’s Petites. And now I can remember no
other film I could claim to have fallen in love with. Fallen in love with in
the way a person falls in love. Probably exactly the same way you fall in love
for the first time, at the age of thirteen, let’s say: as Noëmie Lvovsky’s
girls fall in love with their individual and shared worlds, their first
feelings of freedom, their first feelings of loneliness...their first
boyfriends, too. Their world, the child of demonic imagination and romantic
tempestuousness, is pervaded with the need to belong and a young person’s
feeling of invincibility, defiance, a vague idea of absolute freedom into which
flow deadly fears of expectancy and a waiting for wishes, obsessions and love
to be fulfilled, a waiting for the end and the beginning of a new day. Noëmie
Lvovsky follows the first (and it seems each time, last) pulses of youth in a
highly perceptible, hundred percent effective syncopating rhythm of vignettes,
wild, passionate and crazy, shoving each other away and colliding with each
other, underlined with musical incisions. Like a merciless objective lens, they
bring a premonition and measure time until the moment when they lie in the
grass and, for a while, stop time in the form of a lucky star, which is a pure
image of girlhood, infinite and eternal, and simultaneously a painful memory,
like an old family photo from a time when the last shuddering premonition that
all would once end and nothing would stay the same had come true.
La vie ne me
fait pas peur is therefore a good title for the sequel to the story of the four
girls, which is set three years later. A forty-minute prologue repeats Petites
in half the original running time in specially edited episodes from the
previous film; the remaining two thirds continue the story of the girls three
years later, deep into adolescence, when their paths begin to separate. Even
though it may be reasonable to ask whether a sequel was needed, and whether a
banal account of their separation does not work against ‘Girls’ and all that
which was written in its last image was clearly meant to be unfinished, I
understand the need to continue as a sort of courage, a need to complete, to
give concrete form to the paths which begin to separate, to construct separate
characters and fates, and images of growing up. It is true that the director
did not manage to visually structure this different modus of life with the same
precision, or capture a suitable rhythm, but the narration is still gripping,
and manages to pursue two of the most important strands in the story: the
girls’ painful desire to stay in their common world and lock themselves within
it and their early youth for ever, and the inertia of life, dragging each girl
her separate way.
This year, La vie ne me fait pas
peur won Noëmie Lvovsky the Jean Vigo national prize and the Silver Leopard for
best ‘young film’ at the Locarno festival. Although not very long, her film
career is paved with prizes for outstanding talent. Her first short, Dis-moi oui,
dis-moi non (1989) received a lot of attention and a number of international
awards; she confirmed early expectations with her first feature, Oublie-moi
(1993), in which she masterfully directed Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi in the role of
an insane woman, madly in love with a man who no longer loves her. Here already
can be seen Lvovsky’s fondness for characters and situations on the edge of the
breath of life, abandoning themselves to extreme sentiments. During the pause
which followed she collaborated with important contemporary French film makers
(Desplechin, Garrel) as a screenplay writer among other things. In 1997 she
made a television film, Petites (for Arte). The film was such a success that a
number of renowned festivals requested it (unexpectedly) in theatrical release
form.
Vlado Škafar

Sobota, 16. oktobra 20.00
Petites
Directed by: Noëmie
Lvovsky; written by: Florence Seyvos, Noëmie Lvovsky; director of photography: Agnes Godard, Bertrand Chatry; cast: Magalie
Woch (Emilie), Ingrid Molinier (Ines), Julie-Marie Parmentier (Stella), Camille
Rousselet (Marion), Jean Luc Bideau, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
Francija, 1997, 35mm, col., 88
min. (French spoken, no subtitles)

Oublie-moi
Directed by: Noëmie
Lvovsky; written by: Noëmie Lvovsky, Marc Čolodenko; director of photography: Agnes Godard, Bertrand Chatry; igrajo/ cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
(Nathalie), Emmanuelle Devos (Christelle), Laurent Grévill (Eric),  Olivier Pinalie (Denis), Emmanuel Salinger
(Antoine), Philippe Torreton (Fabrice); music: Andrew Dickson.Francija,
1993, 35mm, col., 95 min., (French spoken,
English subtitles)

The screening will be followed by a
discussion with the director Noëmie Lvovsky and scriptwriter Florence Seyvos.

In collaboration
with Slovenska kinoteka
With the support of
the Institut Français Charles Nodier