SEXTAPE

A word from the selection committee :

The formal setup of Sextape is almost disarmingly simple: a living room, a man asleep on the couch and a young woman (Céleste Brunnquell) watching him as she films herself with a camcorder. The scene immediately calls to mind the long tradition of paintings depicting women sleeping, vulnerable, and exposed to the prying eyes, as the devil’s visit in Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, 1781. Yet Sextape, recalling the surprisingly more modern precedent in Botticelli’s Venus Watching a Sleeping Mars, 1483, it is the woman who watches while the man sleeps. Facing the camera, in the vicinity of the passive, unsuspecting body in the background, she films and dissects the dynamics of their relationship and sexuality, unfolding a striking conversation with herself. The filmmaker develops this formal setup with great inventiveness in the confines of this small space; moving from the living room to the balcony (where she finally finds herself truly alone) she recounts her experience, solliloquies, mimes conversations and gradually gives voice to her uncertainties, and even her suspicions. Emotions are conveyed not only through words but also through silences, gestures, and the body itself, culminating in an embrace. There is also  something of The Anatomy of a Relationship, 1976 – by co-directors and real-life couple Luc Moullet & Antonietta Pizzorno. This time, however, the woman withdraws from the man’s words and pursues her own exploration alone, aloud, to the camera. The title thus hinges on a subtle but telling shift, from sextape to selftape: it is less about showing oneself than it is about finding, through images and solitary speech, a way back to oneself. 

Rose Hirgorom 

Traduction : Aurore Kahan