Low Choir

Here is a beautifully crafted film, seemingly simple as ABC. It involves no tall tales, only modest work – we listen to Robert Schumann’s lieder at home or in the car, we eat, we wash, we celebrate, we weep, etc. Yet, the film is obviously based on some intricate knotwork, maybe like a nod in its own way to the famous double-helix staircase in Chambord, the magnificent castle where Jacques Demy filmed his Peau d’Ane, and where many scenes in this film were shot as well. What should we believe then? First, that there is no “we”, that women and men share, asymmetrically, the singing and the listening, the hunting and the defeat. This precarious balance happens to be glorified here, even if that glory is fragile. Twelve men, twelve singers are getting ready for a concert, where their choir is to turn into a group of discrete mourners, dressed in white shirts adorned with epaulettes worthy of toreadors without an arena, of soldiers without a battle. Twelve? Which messiah are they mourning, then? Nobody here is to give in, and especially not director Sarah Klingemann, composer Nicolas Losson, wonderful singing coach Claire Coursault-Béguin, nor brilliant actresses Astrid Adverbe and Flora Thomas. Maybe (in the broadest possible sense), maybe it is cynegenic art, like in those hunting scenes with wild boars and other creatures laying on the floor; maybe it is “feeding time” after the hunt, like in a painting decorating the room where the concert takes place; or maybe it is all about “manliness”, as one actress says, another name for father, that we need to learn to part with. (Jean-Pierre Rehm)