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CINÉMAMED 2013

Gare du Nord: An apologia for a non-place

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- Set entirely in the sweeping Parisian railway station, the biggest in Europe in terms of passenger numbers, Claire Simon's film interweaves different yet ultimately similar stories

Gare du Nord: An apologia for a non-place

Gare du Nord, the fifth fiction feature film by Claire Simon, has screened in the Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival’s International Competition. Set entirely in the sweeping Parisian railway station, the biggest in Europe in terms of passenger and platform numbers, the film interweaves different yet ultimately similar stories, united by the fact that they all unfold in the very same location. The film starts off by following Ismaël, a Sociology student who’s so fascinated by the Gare du Nord that he makes it the focus of his dissertation. One day, he comes into contact with Mathilde, a lecturer at the Sorbonne who is forced to spend each and every day at the station on account of her illness. A close bond develops between them, which soon turns into love. Other stories subsequently intersect with theirs: that of Sacha, a TV actor looking for his lost daughter, and Joan, a former student of Mathilde’s who is now an estate agent, etc. 

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The approach adopted by Claire Simon is definitely an interesting one: she develops her film starting with a place, or rather a non-place; a quintessential non-place in the form of a railway station. And it’s within this non-place that a complex web of relationships and stories intertwine, turning Marc Augé’s definition of the term - a space whose prerogative is to not be identitary, relational or historical – directly on its head. Heavily influenced by her background as a documentary maker, the author attempts to drill down inside her characters’ inner worlds, making extensive use of close-up shots and trying to isolate individuals from their context, before repositioning them within a mosaic which slowly takes shape as the story unfolds. In this sense, the camera’s eye is similar to Ismaël’s, which serves the same narrative purpose and subsequently acts as the living embodiment of this investigative approach. 

And documentarian research efforts really do form the basis of this work, devised according to working arrangements previously adopted by directors along the lines of Jerry Schatzberg, Jean Eustache and the Dardenne brothers. In league with students from La Fémis, the Simon embarked upon an unbridled, all-consuming documentation phase, producing copious amounts of footage which later gave rise to the documentary Human Geography.

“Few places play such an important role as a public space, where all social classes cross paths”, the director affirmed, explaining the reasons behind her decision to shoot a film in the Parisian railway station. “I wanted to present the station as some sort of mythological cave which contains the characters and their stories, gradually revealing their fears and desires. Train stations are settings which represent life and its fleeting nature, a gateway to hell, a transitional space from which we disappear soon after.” And it’s the fugacity of the encounters depicted, and the characters’ return to their own daily realities, which seem to enthral the director the most.

A special mention should go to the brilliant soundtrack composed by US guitarist Marc Ribot, who’s also a long-term collaborator of Tom Waits, Elton John, Mike Patton and Elvis Costello.

Produced by Les Films d'Ici, the movie was first presented in a world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, before taking part in the London Film Festival and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, to name just two of its selections.

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(Translated from Italian)

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