22/05/2006

Preceding the official competition screening of The Weakest Are Always Right [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Lucas Belvaux , it was up to Martine Doyen to represent Belgium at the Cannes Film Festival, with her first feature, Komma [+see also:
trailer
film profile], screened in the parallel Critics’ Week section this morning, and also in competition for the Caméra d'or.

A tale of death and resurrection, Komma uses the characteristics of a fairytale to recount a tragedy on innocence. In the film’s opening scenes, Peter de Wit, played by singer Arno, is overcome by dumb despair upon waking up in a morgue, having suffered a heart attack and come out of a coma. A victim of modernity, he errs in a world where he no longer knows how to love and where he invents identities, stories and other things before finally meeting the woman he loves.

This return to childhood and forgiveness for Lucie (played by Valérie Lemaître, who also co-wrote the film, and who gives her innocence-lacking character her fragility and her depth as a woman-child) results in Peter being saved. It is her turn to try to give him back his life, by naming him.

Filming her actors, their bodies and lost looks tightly and removing all psychological explanations to follow their disarray as closely as possible, Martine Doyen studies the body and its struggle with what haunts it. While she makes too much use of symbolism and overly long scenes, she does succeed, however, in giving her film the hallmark of a master, using great stylistic rigour and going right to the end of the tale.

Filmed in five weeks for under €1m, Komma was produced by France (OF2B), Belgium (La Parti Production and Moviestream Entertainement), with backing from the Communauté Française et des Télédistributeurs wallons. Distributed in Belgium by Cinéart, Komma is being sold internationally by Bavaria Film.

(Translated from French)