La Frontière de l'aube

The frontier of dawn, like the boundary of a fleeting moment and eternity - photography. The pressing of the camera shutter precisely at that boundary, where the photographer's gaze meets the frozen eternity, locked in the future photograph - in that same moment, love can be born, and the film poses the question: can love ever cross that moment? Can a moment be transformed into eternity? What to choose - "le petit bonheur bourgeois" (Garrel + Poidatz), or the true depth of the moment (Garrel + Smet)? In response, the film offers us a second boundary: the boundary of the mirror, in which eternity is present on one side (Garrel contemplating choosing bourgeois happiness with the childish Poidatz), and on the other side, a spontaneous moment of gaze, in which love is born "at first sight" (Smet). The resolution of the film and the main character is only an answer to the dilemma of how to reconcile the moment with eternity. /// The final literal metaphor (Satan) fills me with concern that Philippe Garrel has turned to genuine devotion and abandoned the legacy of the radicalism of the 60s, but perhaps it was just irony. Otherwise, the film is a dignified culmination of W. Lubtchansky's career, although somewhat precarious, as the film reproduces a photographic vision of the world, and the framing of scenes is often almost static and enclosed in a tight composition. (15.09.2015)