At Locarno festival, “Piaffe”, in Ann Oren, succeeds in his gallop in competition

In the feverish and surreal film of the filmmaker born in Tel Aviv, a woman, cinema strips, metamorphoses and is endowed with a ponytail.

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From the identification of man to animal: on this theme, powerfully dug in the history of cinema – to name a film, at random Balthazar (1968) by Robert Bresson -, 75 e edition of the International Locarno Festival, in Switzerland, which ends on August 13, will have provided some beautiful specimens. Piaffe, from Ann Oren, one of the seventeen feature films that compete for the golden leopard, will have illuminated the last days of the competition, deploying its surreal material from a cinema profession: sound effects . Immense and patient shadow work again at the center of a scenario, after the release in theaters, on August 3, in France, of the Spanish film out of step, by Juanjo Giménez Peña.

Piaffe tells the story of a young noise, Eva (Simone Bucio), responsible for making the sound of an advertisement for a medication stabilizing the mood, balanced, using to do this the image of a rider On his horse – moment of humor creaking on the promises of the merchants. Not suspended from the animal, trotting on site, the displacement is minimal and requires an incredible fingering. Eva must replace her brother at the foot, also nozzle, suffering from a sudden fever … She immerses herself with a lost body in the task, testing different sounds, hitting her coconut on the floor of her apartment, visiting a stable … To the point that one day, on the jump of the bed, the brunette with a delicate skin is discovered at the bottom of the kidneys a tail, then soon a mane, which she elegantly integrates under her trench. As if it was natural.

Now, the young woman trotting her appointments in a delicately burlesque game, attracting the gaze of a botanist, specialist in the reproduction of ferns. The Belle-de-Jour has notch, and horsehair. Neo-bunélien, this “not two” erotic and sexual feeds on more contemporary influences: the taste of the bizarre of Portuguese João Pedro Rodrigues, or the French Lucile Hadzihalilovic, the sensory performances of Christian Rizzo, of Gisèle Vienne, etc. . We cling to the steps of the actress, to her breath, to her silent game, we follow her to understand how far her character wants to go. Epoustouflant, Bucio makes this metamorphosis credible which is also a work. Melting into work, here of noise, to the point of changing skin, or taking a step aside, is not one of the smallest questions of the film.

tilting from reality to wonderful

The director, born in Tel Aviv, in 1979, is part of this generation of artists wishing to renew the stories, working porosity between species, the tilting from reality to wonderful. Before Piaffe, Ann Oren had made a test gallop, if we can say, the short film Passage (2020), a similar story embodied by Simon (e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, performer working the fluidity of gender – which embodies Beautifully here the sick brother of Eva.

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