A strange illness seems to have spread to the Pompidou Center in Paris, and its visitors are injected with images and sounds. Because we no longer dare to speak only of “cinema” to describe the work of the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, born in 1970 in Bangkok, author of the Palme d’Or in 2010. Uncle Boonmee. The one who remembers his past lives..
“Light experimentation” better designates the tree structure of this work, which at the same time expands – to installations, even to performances in virtual reality (VR) – and tends towards minimalism. The title of the complete retrospective of his production, “Lights and Shadows”, which will take place until January 6, 2025 in Beaubourg, within the framework of the Autumn Festival, speaks for itself.
In addition to the filmmaker’s eight feature films, including Tropical disease (2004), Uncle Boonmee (2010), Cemetery of splendor (2015) and Memory (2021) – filmed in Colombia, with Tilda Swinton – and some short films, viewers will discover the exhibition titled “Particles de nuit”, where a series of intimate videos interact in the Atelier Brancusi (in the square in front of the Pompidou Centre), which the artist plunged into darkness.
Intoxicating, the ride acts as a memorial walk at the cinema for Apichatpong Weerasethakul, nicknamed “Joe” by those close to him for short. There we find the elements that populate his films: childhood memories, myths of reincarnation (animal, with tiger, catfish, etc.), stories of villagers who remember the army raids chasing the communists, sounds of the jungle in superimpositions .
Some images act like flashes: a young soldier sleeping, with his mouth open, leaning on the trunk of a tree, a woman dozing under a blanket (Tilda Swinton having sweet dreams), an old man on dialysis (a double echo of the filmmaker’s father , the end of his life). , and the character of Uncle Boonmee). Close-up of a hand incessantly transcribing a dream on a blank page. Would our eyes escape from our heads to see better? In the video installation, some eyeballs float in space, like soap bubbles. Solarium (2023), and we can’t help but think of the ghost monkey fromUncle Boonmeereincarnation of a missing son, returns one afternoon to the family table and asks his loved ones to reduce the intensity of the light: “There is too much light, I can’t see.”he said in essence.
A sweet dizziness
Regarding performance in virtual reality, A conversation with the sun (a creation based on a previous installation and a book of the same name), literally takes us off the ground. Here we are like those transmigratory souls that are reincarnated in other bodies, in other places. In the distance, two red eyes (those of the ghost monkey) watch us go away…
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