It doesn't get much more "typically French" than Philippe Garrel, who builds images out of the smallest events: light falling on a face, sudden postures of aggression or affection between people, a husband bandaging his wife's foot. He often conceives a filmic moment in terms of time-stopping portraiture, and the camera remains so still and patient that the gestures of his characters seem to extend into infinity. Stillness in modern cinema is often an act of impatience, but it comes naturally to Garrel, unencumbered as he is by any trace of corporate irreality. He films without regard to what we now freely refer to as "film language," and he is uninterested in editing per se (or, for that matter, sound, which is always secondary to the image). It's probably more useful to think of his work in terms of events rather than shots because there is a wholeness to even the smallest things. To experience the beauty of any given moment in these films is to understand the degree to which the reality of what is filmed has been slowly but systematically relieved of its weight throughout the years, to the point where it now seems more virtual than actual. And as opposed to the bulk of modern filmmaking practice, in which beauty is appliquéed on top of the image, in Garrel's films the beauty grows out of the image. It is Garrel's faith in the ability of the viewer's eye to naturally achieve a state of contemplative balance, to become a delicate receptor, that binds his films together.-Kent Jones, excerpted from the article "Sad and Proud of It: The Films of Philippe Garrel," in Film Comment, May-June 1997Our special thanks to Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, France; French Cultural Services, New York and San Francisco (Véronique Godard, Emmanuel Delloye); and Lincoln Center (Richard Peña) for their generous assistance in making this series possible. Tuesday July 1, 1997
