Ce Jour-La/That Day (Switzerland)
Y
Jan 1, 2005
In Competition
"Ce Jour-la" (That Day) is at once a tribute to Swiss author-playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt, a meditation on the tragedy of the former Chilean military dictatorship and an absurdist comedy with shades of Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty.
In other words, Chilean-born French filmmaker Raoul Ruiz is up to his old tricks. This is rarified cinema for lovers of the cerebral and surreal. Yet Ruiz's films -- he has made some 75 in the past 30 years -- play art houses the world over and are mainstays In Competition here. "Ce Jour-la" will certainly please his admirers but is unlikely to convert many others to his peculiar brand of surrealism.
The story is set in an imaginary Switzerland, where military convoys rumble along country roads and two police inspectors quietly watch yet do nothing as monstrous crimes are committed.
There are two key figures: One is an ethereal beauty, Livia (Elsa Zylberstein), her face calm yet alert like a Modigliani portrait. She is ... not normal but hates the word "insane." She is an innocent, and she is an heiress. The other is Emil Pointpiorot (Bernard Giraudeau) -- "Emil with no accent and no final E," he constantly instructs. Emil is allowed to escape from a lunatic asylum so he will kill the heiress, an unfortunate but necessary arrangement by her father (Michel Piccoli) as the only possible way to resolve his business debts.
But a funny thing happens on the way to Livia's rendezvous with death. In one day, a day she believes to be "the best day of my life," she is the unwitting instrument of the fatal demise of several family members. Meanwhile, Emil develops a tender protectiveness toward his presumed victim. Gradually, he kills the remaining members of the scheming family in their country estate.
The two assemble a macabre Final Supper, a dining table of the dead, consisting of the corpses of those who meant to harm the heiress but met their own comeuppance instead.
Clearly, the dreamlike plot is never meant to work on a literal level. It helps to know that Ruiz, a leading figure in theater and later film in his native land, fled Chile after the 1973 fascist coup. Indirectly, he speaks here of the cruelties and torments of Chile in the dark years that followed.
Is also helps to know of his admiration of Durrenmatt, who burrowed beneath the placid surface of Swiss neutrality to explore the conflicts and contradictions of that national identity.
The film opens itself up to many interpretations about madness at the personal level and madness at the level of the state. Ruiz's actors deliver delectable performances, full of wit and subtle irony. Murder scenes are played with humor, each death a study in the absurd, each a little morality play with exquisite comic timings that kid the standard murder scenes of Hollywood movies. Livia tries to stop Emil's rampage -- "That's generally not done!" she admonishes -- but accepts each death as a love offering by her now gently obsessed admirer.
Cinematographer Acacio De Almedia achieves a cool, pristine crispness, an almost painterly beauty where faces stand out and we can read the bewilderment in people's eyes, the bewilderment of the mad, who suddenly see more lucidly than the sane.
CE JOUR-LA
A Gemini Films/Light Night Production/France 3 Cinema co-production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Raoul Ruiz
Producers: Paulo Branco, Patricia Plattner
Director of photography: Acacio De Almedia
Production designer: Bruno Beauge
Costume designer: Claire Gerard-Hirne
Music: Jorge Arriagada
Editor: Valeria Sarmiento
Cast:
Pointpiorot: Bernard Giraudeau: Livia: Elsa Zylberstein
Raufer: Jean-Luc Bidieu
Harald: Michel Piccoli
Treffle: Jean-Francois Balmer
Ritter: Christian Vadim
Roland: Laurent Malet
Hubus: Rufus
Running time -- 105 minutes
No MPAA rating
"Ce Jour-la" (That Day) is at once a tribute to Swiss author-playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt, a meditation on the tragedy of the former Chilean military dictatorship and an absurdist comedy with shades of Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty.
In other words, Chilean-born French filmmaker Raoul Ruiz is up to his old tricks. This is rarified cinema for lovers of the cerebral and surreal. Yet Ruiz's films -- he has made some 75 in the past 30 years -- play art houses the world over and are mainstays In Competition here. "Ce Jour-la" will certainly please his admirers but is unlikely to convert many others to his peculiar brand of surrealism.
The story is set in an imaginary Switzerland, where military convoys rumble along country roads and two police inspectors quietly watch yet do nothing as monstrous crimes are committed.
There are two key figures: One is an ethereal beauty, Livia (Elsa Zylberstein), her face calm yet alert like a Modigliani portrait. She is ... not normal but hates the word "insane." She is an innocent, and she is an heiress. The other is Emil Pointpiorot (Bernard Giraudeau) -- "Emil with no accent and no final E," he constantly instructs. Emil is allowed to escape from a lunatic asylum so he will kill the heiress, an unfortunate but necessary arrangement by her father (Michel Piccoli) as the only possible way to resolve his business debts.
But a funny thing happens on the way to Livia's rendezvous with death. In one day, a day she believes to be "the best day of my life," she is the unwitting instrument of the fatal demise of several family members. Meanwhile, Emil develops a tender protectiveness toward his presumed victim. Gradually, he kills the remaining members of the scheming family in their country estate.
The two assemble a macabre Final Supper, a dining table of the dead, consisting of the corpses of those who meant to harm the heiress but met their own comeuppance instead.
Clearly, the dreamlike plot is never meant to work on a literal level. It helps to know that Ruiz, a leading figure in theater and later film in his native land, fled Chile after the 1973 fascist coup. Indirectly, he speaks here of the cruelties and torments of Chile in the dark years that followed.
Is also helps to know of his admiration of Durrenmatt, who burrowed beneath the placid surface of Swiss neutrality to explore the conflicts and contradictions of that national identity.
The film opens itself up to many interpretations about madness at the personal level and madness at the level of the state. Ruiz's actors deliver delectable performances, full of wit and subtle irony. Murder scenes are played with humor, each death a study in the absurd, each a little morality play with exquisite comic timings that kid the standard murder scenes of Hollywood movies. Livia tries to stop Emil's rampage -- "That's generally not done!" she admonishes -- but accepts each death as a love offering by her now gently obsessed admirer.
Cinematographer Acacio De Almedia achieves a cool, pristine crispness, an almost painterly beauty where faces stand out and we can read the bewilderment in people's eyes, the bewilderment of the mad, who suddenly see more lucidly than the sane.
CE JOUR-LA
A Gemini Films/Light Night Production/France 3 Cinema co-production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Raoul Ruiz
Producers: Paulo Branco, Patricia Plattner
Director of photography: Acacio De Almedia
Production designer: Bruno Beauge
Costume designer: Claire Gerard-Hirne
Music: Jorge Arriagada
Editor: Valeria Sarmiento
Cast:
Pointpiorot: Bernard Giraudeau: Livia: Elsa Zylberstein
Raufer: Jean-Luc Bidieu
Harald: Michel Piccoli
Treffle: Jean-Francois Balmer
Ritter: Christian Vadim
Roland: Laurent Malet
Hubus: Rufus
Running time -- 105 minutes
No MPAA rating
Share on LinkedIn
