Synopsis
A film casting in Paris. Young actresses (and actors) try to incarnate the Swiss writer and traveller Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942). In order to get the role of this emblematic and sulphurous figure of the late 30s, a child of the “lost generation”, antifascist and gay, these actors play scenes of her life, and talk about their own life through the prism of her fascinating and ambiguous personality. A portrait arises, singular and multiple. Slowly, a reconstituted and collective figure emerges and encounters her own fictitious life.
A word from Tënk
Trapped by the attempt to evoke Annemarie Schwarzenbach's many lives, filmmaker Véronique Aubouy chooses to weave an experimental, communal portrait, exploring the impossible embodiment of the great writer and adventurer by a new generation that reclaims her thought.
In the shelter of an almost deserted outside world, the filmmaker guides the viewer along a winding, playful path, giving body and life, between inertia and seduction. By blending archive reconstructions, pantomime, role-playing and the intimacy of the actors hired to interpret the rebellious artist, the film gradually builds an experience of identification that is both subjective and organic.
From this point on, Véronique Aubouy's unusual approach brings out a form of emotional truth in each of the performers, and reveals, fragment by fragment, the great struggle still to be waged to live and exist as freely as the Swiss rebel.
Terence Chotard
Filmmaker
