Christelle Prot

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At age 50, Eugene Green — who left the U.S. in 1969 to settle in France — proves himself to be the mutant offspring of Robert Bresson and Manoel De Oliveira. First-time scripter-helmer’s exquisite oddity, “Every Night,” shows complete mastery of the austere, formal tradition perfected by his elders, but he makes it his own with bursts of satire and an insistence on crispy anachronistic diction that solemnly honors every last consonant. Pic has been holding its own at the oldest functioning arthouse in Paris since its publicity-free March 28 release, which was announced only via give-away postcards.Read More »

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In Correspondences, Eugene Green returns to his familiar themes of interconnectedness, communion, and transcendent love (most recently illustrated in Green’s sublime feature Le Pont des arts) to create a tale of young love in the digital age. Presented as a series of emails read offscreen that are juxtaposed against isolated frontal shots of the anonymous lovers and the (interior) spaces they inhabit, the film also subtly evokes Alain Resnais’s baroque, nouveau roman puzzle film Last Year at Marienbad in its interplay of memory and seduction (or more appropriately, memory as seduction).Read More »

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Some filmmakers have difficulty traveling between the short format and feature films, the former more often than not feeling like exercises, excerpts, or condensations, or the latter, in rarer cases (given the relative death of the short format some 60-odd years ago) seeming simply like brief ideas outstaying their welcome. The aesthetic of writer/director Eugène Green is so clean and simple in this age of image saturation and hyper-abundant kinetics that his “mini-film” Les Signes feels as natural and fluid as his fascinating longer features like 2004’s Le Pont des Arts and 2003’s miniature knight’s tale, Le Monde Vivant. Read More »

Synopsis:
Named for the famous seventeenth-century Roman church Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, which was designed by the legendary architect (and Bernini rival) Francesco Borromini, LA SAPIENZA echoes Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia in its tale of Alexandre Schmid (Fabrizio Rongione), a brilliant architect who, plagued by doubts and loss of inspiration, embarks on a quest of artistic and spiritual renewal guided by his study of Borromini. His wife Aliénor (Christelle Prot), similarly troubled by the crassness of contemporary society – as well as the couple’s lack of communication and passion – decides to accompany him. In Stresa, a chance encounter with adolescent siblings Goffredo (who is about to commence his own architectural studies) and his fragile sister Lavinia upends the couple’s plans. As Borromini’s spirit and the vertiginous splendour of his structures spin a mysterious web among them, within the course of a few days the foursome experiences a series of life-altering revelations. Read More »