A travers la foret (Through The Forest)

Multi-genre films are difficult to pull off and as a result there are only a few directors I can name off the tip of my tongue that do/did a good job of it.  The main one, of course, is Andrei Tarkovsky, who had an ability to meld human drama with surreal dream theory, science fiction, and near occult horror, in a way that made his films transcendent and beautiful.  Another such director with this ability, albeit in a much more pulpy way, is Sion Sono.  Love Exposure: Is it a horror film? Is it a domestic drama?  Is it a romance film?  It's all three, and you can't take your eyes off of it.  Recently I discovered the work of Jean-Paul Civeyrac via happenstance and decided to take a dive in with Á travers la forêt, or Through The Forest.

This may be the shortest synopsis I ever give because I wouldn't be able to convey what the film is about without giving the entire story away.  It's a short film, a little over 1 hour in length, about Armelle (played by Camille Berthomier aka Jehny Beth), a girl who is stricken with grief over the death of her boyfriend Renaud, and how her inability to cope with this reality pushes her to attempt extra-spiritual ways to get back into his arms.

This film blends genre very well.  What could have simply been a psychological study of grief is mixed in a surreal way to pose theories about the possibilities of life after death.  The cinematographic design of the film is superb, breaking the story down into 9 scenes that are each filmed in a single take.  They also chose to keep the camera at a mid shot, never showing us a full head to toe of any of the actors, going so far as to keep them in extreme close ups as they move around the set pieces of apartments, coffee shops, and the outside world.  In this way the performances of the actors are enhanced.  We are with them, specifically Armelle; we feel her every emotion.

This may be cutting away from the critical analysis a little bit, but I discovered this film because of my recent obsession with a band called Savages.  Camille Berthomier, under the alias Jehny Beth, is the vocalist for this group and seeing the film with that in mind reminded me of the complexity of the human soul.  Our ability to convey so much thought and emotion into different forms of expression is simply astounding.  We make all the mistakes and suffer all the triumphs and tragedies that life has to offer, attempting to then share these experiences in a meaningful way in order to preserve the legacy of our time on this Earth.  It is films like this that capture all the essences of this inexplicable feeling.

Surprisingly, in an age where there are countless streaming subscriber services, Civeyrac's films appear to be damn impossible to get at.  You can find this one with a small collection of his films in a UK box set with english subtitles, but that's pretty much it.  If you have the scratch, I highly recommend doing so, especially if you're looking for something outside the typical Hollywood fair.