Philippe Garrel
La Concentration
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 35mm
Year 1968
Language(s) French
Artist(s) Philippe Garrel
Subtitles English
Running time 89 min
Films
LA CONCENTRATION (1968) 89'
Description
A birth at the beginning, a death at the end, in between a missing child and a broken love. For the first image, the night will literally have to be cut with scissors. All sorts of ties unite the two characters—umbilical cords mooring "superior marionettes"—to the practice that animates them: the sound thread serves to make them visible, the silver film stock to cut one's veins, the dolly tracks to crawl on, the corpse transporter's cart. Could real life be elsewhere? In those three days of uninterrupted shooting, for instance, of which the film would be the trace, as of a crime?
— Jean Narboni, Cahiers du Cinéma
La Concentration, by Garrel, twenty years old, four films: a title that is a program. Dry colors, like a statement. The couple, very young, children of the century. A whole life, from birth to death. A single set, with a large bed at the center where one performs, on the left the cold room, a shower, a faucet that spits blood, on the right the furnace. Prisoners until the end of time. End of a game already played before it even began. I hate this world that saw me born. An instinctive statement, reinforced by the omnipotence of direct sound.
— Le Monde