07/09/2009

The circus as a metaphor for life: it’s not a particularly original idea, especially in cinema (explored in different ways by directors from Chaplin to Fellini). But it isn’t the image of a circus tent seen from the outside, like the one in Jacques Rivette’s 36 Views of Saint-Loup Peak [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in competition at the Venice Film Festival, that takes us back to a familiar world.

It is of course just a narrative and theatrical (although this is not cinematic theatre) ploy, which enables Rivette to focus on some particularly evocative characters. Vittorio (Sergio Castellitto, appearing in his second film by the French director after Who Knows?) is a successful manager who by chance meets Kate (a superb, melancholy, sorrowful and psychologically-wounded Jane Birkin), who is the owner of a small travelling circus in the French countryside.

The setting is the Languedoc-Roussillon region, which financed the film (distributed in Italy by Bolero Film) in co-production with Cinemaundici, Alien Produzioni, Pierre Grise Productions, France 2 Cinema, Rai Cinema, the Italian Culture Ministry, the French National Film Centre and Media Plus.

The tiny but well-organised circus troupe offers inspiration to Rivette, who co-wrote the screenplay (a wonderful musical text whose gracefulness helps to cleanse the viewers’ ears and mind) with Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent, Shirel Amitay and Castellitto. He thus describes the tormented interior world of Kate, who left her father’s circus for a period of fifteen years.

Vittorio is so fascinated by her that he seems to interrupt his business trip between Milan and Barcelona indefinitely. This temporal hiatus allows him to abandon his presumably hectic routine and become permanently involved in the troupe’s quiet life, so much so that, at the end, he steps down into the ring in a beautiful scene alongside Alexandre the clown (André Marcon).

The miracle-working presence of Vittorio seems to revitalise both the show and, especially, Kate’s state of mind, helping her to free herself from the demons of the past, which held her captive. Just like in a fairytale.

That is, in the end, the essence of 36 Views of Saint-Loup Peak. A seemingly light-hearted film, it is as profound as life itself, where the past returns "but is nonetheless past", where we put on masks and paint our faces like clowns, where the stage on which we perform every day is, like a circus ring, "the most dangerous place in the world", where we get used to our pain (because it is always comforting, in a sense) and where "nothing is everything" (the film is, on first sight, constructed from nothing…). And, above all, where it is important that audiences (made up of other people), laugh at the performances of the clowns (i.e. us), thus sharing their lives. This is the only way to ensure that, as in the film’s ending, "all’s well that ends well".

(Translated from Italian)