THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
Sophie Fillières’ seventh feature film, my life my mouth comes to us posthumously, concluding the leisurely work of an atypical filmmaker, who died on July 31, 2023, at the age of 58. Shot when the director knew she was already seriously ill and made under the supervision of her two children, Agathe and Adam Bonitzer, the film retains, of course, something of the precariousness of production against time. Inevitably acquiring testamentary value, my life my mouth It also knows perfectly well how to be something else, faithful to the absurd exuberance and language games that characterize the director. Or the endearing portrait of a disturbed woman who, stumbling against the wall of reality, seeks a way out.
When we discover Barberie Bichette (perpetuating the line of improbable surnames that Fillières loved so much), it is in the foreground: she frowns at her computer screen, hesitating about the type of letter she should adopt (“Hebrew Arial, really?”), in front of a desperately blank page. Agnès Jaoui, the performer, immediately imposes herself on the character with a formidable vocal regime: a murmur in basso continuo, a flow of anarchic thoughts immediately verbalized, shaken by tics and onomatopoeia, which say everything about the inner disorder of this bewildered woman.
“Barbie,” as she is nicknamed, is 55 years old and finds it increasingly difficult to cope with her daily life, plagued by disappointments, anger and microaggressions. She writes poetry, but mostly works for an advertising agency, inventing silly slogans (the latest for “a cereal with a hole in the middle”). She lives alone, although her children sometimes fly by and, therefore, too much in her head, the same one that you have to fight with in front of the mirror every morning. Then Barbie goes off the rails, sometimes says nonsense, provides improper services, gets lost in botched or uncontrolled actions. She feels invaded by something, a threatening shadow that we hardly dare to call “illness”, or even “madness”. And then, one day, she suffered a syncope, which took her straight to the psychiatric hospital, in confinement.
Slips and evasions of language
the beauty of my life my mouth This is due, first of all, to the fine cut that he makes of the heroine, a hesitant subject, as well as to the camera that does not let go of her for a single step. It is above all the portrait of a depression, of a lack of adherence to things, which is lodged mainly in the absurd slips and evasions of language. Speech is a slippery slope that turns out to be strewn with traps and incongruous rhymes (“Beatrice the Creator”), untimely misunderstandings (the doctor she refers to as the “person to notify in case of emergency”). As she passes someone exiting the elevator, Barbie snaps: “Did you flush the toilet properly?” – a joke that causes a sensation and from which she struggles to free herself.
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