COMING TO TERMS WITH THE DEAD
(PETITS ARRANGEMENTS AVEC LES MORTS)
A film review by James Berardinelli
Copyright 1996 James Berardinelli
RATING (0 TO 10): 8.0 Alternative Scale: ***1/2 out of ****
France, 1994 Running Length: 1:48 MPAA Classification: No MPAA Rating (Mature themes) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 Shown at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, 5/8/96, 5/10/96
Cast: Didier Dandre, Alexander Zloto, Catherine Ferran, Agathe de Chassey, Audrey Boitel Director: Pascale Ferran Screenplay: Pierre Trividic and Pascale Ferran Cinematography: Jean-Claude Larrieu Music: Beatrice Thiriet In French with subtitles
How we deal with death is as important as how we deal with life. In fact, how we deal with death affects how we deal with life. That's the central theme of Pascale Ferran's celebrated first feature, COMING TO TERMS WITH THE DEAD, which won the Camera d'Or for best picture at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. The childhood trauma of losing someone close forms the common underpinning of three stories that examine how death transforms the survivors, both in the short- and long-term.
The first segment of the triptych focuses on Jumbo, a nine and one- half year old who has lost his best friend to cancer. Jumbo is racked by guilt over this loss, feeling that he somehow should have had the power to stop it. To cope with the unexpected void, the boy has created an elaborate ritual in which he ventures into an abandoned underground chamber and lights candles in memory of the dead so that, for as long as he remembers them, their souls can remain free from the "brokers of nothingness" that consign forgotten spirits to oblivion.
The second and third episodes view another loss -- that of a young girl killed more than twenty years ago in a moped accident -- from the perspectives of her younger brother and older sister. Francois and Zaza are very different people, but both have been scarred by this same childhood tragedy. Zaza, always regarded as "the strong one", finds that, in middle age, her hard facade is cracking. She's suffering from insomnia and breaks into tears at the most unexpected times. Francois, who collects and classifies insects, is fascinated by death as "a condition of precision".
The three stories unfold in a leisurely manner, as a series of disjointed, seemingly-random flashbacks which emerge during a summer afternoon that the characters spend at the beach, watching Francois and Zaza's older brother, Vincent, build an elaborate sand castle. The castle, the film's central image, is a monumental symbol to both the ephemeral nature of life and the resilience of the human spirit. Although something so meticulously-constructed and beautiful can be torn down easily, with patience, it can also be built up again.
Ferran never insults the audience's intelligence, nor does she make concessions to the inattentive. Her unique narrative style forces viewers to piece together multi-dimensional pictures of the three main characters. However, even though all the holes aren't filled in, and the sequence of events is presented in a jumbled, non-chronological order, Ferran's techniques of remaining with one character through an extended series of flashbacks and repeating scenes in the present from different viewpoints keeps confusion to a minimum. It's actually easy to understand where each scene fits in the overall story, and which character a flashback pertains to.
Ferran's unconventional style has much to do with the film's success. By presenting her triptych in this manner, she infuses three relatively-simple stories with a constant sense of discovery. On the surface, nothing much happens during this day at the beach -- a bunch of people sit around watching the construction of a sand castle. But, through Ferran's keen probing, we see into the souls of Jumbo, Francois, and Zaza. And, for those of us in the audience, that makes this ordinary sun-soaked day a momentous occasion.
- James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@bc.cybernex.net web: http://www.cybernex.net/~berardin
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