Suite Armoricaine
Description
As with her debut film Illumination (SFIFF 2006), Pascale Breton’s enchanting new film carves out a distinctive story generated by the terrain, music and language of Brittany. Françoise, a Paris-based art historian, plans a return to her native city and college to teach an art class at the University of Rennes, delivering unique and multi-faceted lectures that weave geography and history into discussions of Poussin and other artists. Her troubled student Ion is contending with his itinerant alcoholic mother, Moon, as well as the demands of university life. From these two seemingly disparate characters, Suite Armoricaine weaves a seductive web of relationships and memories grounded in very specific places and contexts. When Ion falls down in Françoise’s class, the view is initially from the teacher’s perspective, but then the story rewinds and the reasons behind his tumble take on different notes. This fluidity and musicality of themes and visual presentation recalls the work of Arnaud Desplechin, with the similar regional specificity of some of his work. Though the film’s title comes from a particular Breton song, the idea of a musical suite is never far off as this magisterial director weaves in multiple counterpoints—the tragic Moon (a heartbreaking Elina Löwensohn); Ion’s blind girlfriend Lydie; and Catherine, Françoise’s dramatic friend from college—to complement the grand but very human stories at its center. —Rod Armstrong
Pascale Breton is a writer and director born in Morlaix, France. She initially studied geography and regional planning before becoming interested in making films. Her first film Illumination (SFIFF 2006) played to great critical acclaim and she has collaborated with Catherine Corsini and Alain Tasma, among others. With Suite Armoricaine, she worked creatively with the students at the University of Rennes to develop the film. One of her motivating factors was to create a feeling of equality, so “aerial photography can mean as much as a painting from the Renaissance, a punk song is as important as an Elizabethan pavane … that everything you hear and see, every person you meet, every urban or natural landscape becomes important.”
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/158107807?autoplay=1Film Details
Language French
Year 2015
Runtime 148
Country France
Director Pascale Breton
Producer Mélanie Gerin, Paul Rozenberg
Writer Pascale Breton
Editor Gilles Volta, Joseph Guinvarc’h, Camille Lotteau
Cinematographer Tom Harari
Music Eric Duchamp
Cast Valérie Dreville, Kaou Langoët, Elina Löwensohn