A young man's ghost wanders through the city meeting up other dead folks and helping them get thru the process of understanding and adapting to their condition. A longtime lover is able to see (and feel) him, developing an eccentric, romantically surreal relationship, as he tries to recall his past feelings. Stéphane Batut's seductive and enigmatic feature debut is a captivating look at how we're easily able to forgive and forget, let go and re-adapt while dealing with the inevitable cycle of life.
4 Reviews
Fine first film
EdgarST5 May 2024
Warning: Spoilers
To my list of contemporary films about kind ghosts, who go through life fulfilling tasks, loving and seeking meaning, I now add this fantasy melodrama, deliberately hyper-romantic with the music of Benoit de Villeneuve and Gaspar Claus, which won the prestigious Louis Delluc award for Best First Feature of French Cinema in 2019.
«Vif-argent» (mercury or quicksilver, literally) is the work of Stéphane Batut, an actor in a few movies, whose main activity in the French film industry has been as casting director, selecting casts for more than 60 features. For this film, he chose the boom operator Timothée Robart to play Juste, a 20-year-old boy who appears by a lake, unaware that he has died, and who, instead of being listed as dead by afterlife officer Kramarz, is sent here to accompany the recently deceased to their new "residence". But one day, in the subway, Agathe, a 30-year-old woman, sees him, then she follows him and finally assures him that she met him in Turkey ten years ago and that they had a romantic adventure, which they rekindle. When Juste falls in love, Kramarz informs him that his time on this plane is over and the young ghost resists.
Juste's main problem is his invisibility. Some people do not see him and, after a while, Agathe too, from a moment on in the plot, in which the story became a bit complicated for me without needing to be, with musical bursts that ended up breaking the hypnotic effect of the film had on me for more than an hour.
However, there is a lot of charm in this story, in the characters (Juste's naivete, the African couple of Alpha and Bailo, Agathe's Italian grandmother, the short, moving monologue of Juste's father) and in the locations (the Paris of emigrants, with peddler's tents in the streets, African turbans and robes) that keep interest alive. Good start for a directorial career, which can bear better fruits in the future.
«Vif-argent» (mercury or quicksilver, literally) is the work of Stéphane Batut, an actor in a few movies, whose main activity in the French film industry has been as casting director, selecting casts for more than 60 features. For this film, he chose the boom operator Timothée Robart to play Juste, a 20-year-old boy who appears by a lake, unaware that he has died, and who, instead of being listed as dead by afterlife officer Kramarz, is sent here to accompany the recently deceased to their new "residence". But one day, in the subway, Agathe, a 30-year-old woman, sees him, then she follows him and finally assures him that she met him in Turkey ten years ago and that they had a romantic adventure, which they rekindle. When Juste falls in love, Kramarz informs him that his time on this plane is over and the young ghost resists.
Juste's main problem is his invisibility. Some people do not see him and, after a while, Agathe too, from a moment on in the plot, in which the story became a bit complicated for me without needing to be, with musical bursts that ended up breaking the hypnotic effect of the film had on me for more than an hour.
However, there is a lot of charm in this story, in the characters (Juste's naivete, the African couple of Alpha and Bailo, Agathe's Italian grandmother, the short, moving monologue of Juste's father) and in the locations (the Paris of emigrants, with peddler's tents in the streets, African turbans and robes) that keep interest alive. Good start for a directorial career, which can bear better fruits in the future.
beautiful...
Kirpianuscus2 April 2020
...or meditative or poetic or eccentric. A seductive portrait of afterlife and sentimental connections or hope or forgiveness . Romantic and provocative. Moving. Short, a film who you deserve as good stop of time, for reflecting about life, for the need of special fairy tales.
Beauty
peter-5204525 March 2021
Outstanding! What a treat: a poem, a short story, a thought. This movie feels like a painted dream, so soft and sensible and modest too. Perfect and creative photography, simple and clear script, yet surprising at times. Actors are lovable. A little bit bombastic score but beautiful!
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