Les photos d'Alix (1982) User Reviews

Intriguing

[gbill-74877 · 8/10 · 24 April 2024]

"I seduced someone with this picture. I sent it to him, and he fell madly in love with it. With the photographer, that is."

I could listen to an artist talk about their art all day long (here in French no less), and this was made even more intriguing by the descriptions shifting about halfway through to no longer match the images, at least in a literal sense. Part of the film seems to reveal just how much we may not understand about a photo without such an intimate conversation, another part seems to raise questions of what we're willing to believe in trying to "get" art despite what's plainly in front of our eyes, which were fascinating sides of the same coin. The talented photographer, Alix Cléo Roubaud, someone whose work I would love to see in an exhibition someday, would die less than a year later at just 30, making this little short feel even more elusive and poignant.

Mama meets Dada

[EMan-14 · 9/10 · 11 March 2007]

This is a true art film in the literal sense of the word. In an unadorned room, a woman shows a book of her photographs to young boy. Their relationship is brilliantly vague; their ages perfectly spaced so that they could be mother/son, teacher/student, even lovers. The entire film consists of the woman simply describing the photos to the boy. We see each one as she turns the page. The effect is surprisingly gripping, and possibly the reason for this can only be grasped in retrospect: at a certain point - and that point is probably different for each viewer - you realize that the detailed "descriptions" the woman gives for each picture bears no relationship to them. They are, in effect, random bits of descriptive text joined with random photographs. The moment of this realization is as surprising, exhilarating, and chilling as the third act surprise reveal in any good thriller. We immediately question everything we've seen before. What we're left with is what any good work of art leaves us with, more questions, not answers. What is the relationship of words to pictures? What does is mean for a description of something to be "accurate?" Do words "change" how we perceive visuals? If you believe Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" opens a profound can of worms, this is a film you must see. Remember the actual name of that Magritte painting? It's called "The Treachery of Images."

Interesting for Photographers only

[mrdonleone · 2/10 · 8 May 2020]

Interesting sixties wannabe Jean Eustache's parody on Francois Truffaut's wet dream on two young people's wild fantasies on pictures in an experimental yet bizarre kinda way a la Jean Luc Goddard; yet, though it sounds fascinating as a concept, the total ends up in a quite boring sort of failure... Interesting for photographers only.