Robert Taschen

A house, somewhere or other. In France, probably in the countryside: a few clues give some information, like the age and style of the furniture or the presence of a rabbit. Meagre pickings, and faced with the radical dryness of this barely hospitable short film, viewers may understandably feel offended at being treated with such scant consideration. Robert Taschen will teach them nothing, has nothing to tell them.  This roughly sketched portrait is of the man who lives in the house. Alone, clearly, just as this is clearly no ordinary solitude, and a long period of drifting has made him a castaway, far away from the coasts of normal life, which the viewer will deduce without too much difficulty from both the man’s attitude and the rags on his back – quite literally rags, a cardboard-dry shirt spilling out through the gaping holes of a sweater whose stripes have disappeared under several generations of grime. In his house, which is the same state as he is, he goes about his business, indifferent to the camera, tinkers around, then mumbles, nibbles on a slice of white bread, folds and refolds his sheets, also in tatters, mumbles again, peels an apple. So what does this film, which gives no thought to us, with its character who gives no thought to the film, want from us? Different things, which authorise its mishandling of the viewer – things that the film does, while saying nothing. For instance: having us hear what noise such solitude makes, and what kind of silence. Or else: finding the way, to conclude after eight stone-dry minutes, of lifting this stinking heap of reality to the heights of a fairytale, under a blue night, by following a rabbit.

Jérôme Momcilovic