Two Films by Pierre Coulibeuf

Amour Neutre is from 2005 and concerns itsel with the relationship between man and woman. Two different couples - which can be seen as parts of a whole - are wandering through a forrest and a château during a misty autumn/winter day. Both seem lost and disconnected, talking about their respective relationships, using the same phrases over and over again. Lost in time and space, the film tries to deliver its message through a discontinuous editing that jumps from scene to scene, and through dialogues - superimposed as off-voices over long camera-takes of the surrounding landscape - which play out like monologues in the best tradition of Huillet/Straub. Added to this is a loop-like sampling of various scenes, repeating several numerous times and disrupting a flow based on analogy. Instead the rhythm resembles more an associative montage, the images beginning to talk to themselves, but always discontinued through the power of the director. A dialogue isn't possible, a monologue neither, a story in a traditional sense doesn't take place, but neither does a "traditional" theoretical discourse. What we have is always in between, as the characters say themselves numerous times. A Waiting for
something that never happens. Coulibeuf's films seem to be located in the currently popular discourse between "art" and "film", though for me these terms have no direct meaning. A film is a film is a film, while a discourse is often taking place only on sheets of paper . An interesting discourse - but nevertheless one that rarely concerns the filmic image per se. When I remember the two films, the things standing out most claerly are a feeling for beauty and a precision in the composition of the frame and the structuring of film in general, meaning a rare sense for aesthetics and rhythm. Speaking in more conventional terms, this is a director to look out for if you are a lover of the filmic image. The films are filled with a sensitivity for the absurdities of life in which melancholy and its counterparts are frequent visitors. Coulibeuf's comic pacing reminded me of Tati, and seemed to come out of an understanding of human beings in general, rather than being a remedy to spicing enclosed l'art pour l'art products. Thus what we have is a humanist auteur in the traditional sense that has fully arrived in the 21st century. Kind of a MTV-Generation Renoir and Marker, without the term's bad implications.

The second film was Balkan baroque (1999) that centers around the life and work of performance artist Marina Abramovic, it is a large private travelogue and filmic diary reported through the voice of Abramovic and showcased through numerous remarkably staged and choreographed performances. Just how much credit goes to Pierre Coulibeuf and how much to Marina Abramovic is anyone's guess, as it is clearly as much her film as his. Again the rhythmical structuring of the film is remarkable, but so is Abramovic herself. A tremendously energetic and photogenic woman, she seems always in control of her world, even when she is retelling tragic events that were out of her control at that time. The strategy of letting her reenact some of her life proves a fruitful endeavour, as the contrast between present and past is always evident. In this way, the viewer is always aware of the change that is constantly taking place in life. Born in 1946, through her life-story we also learn a bit about Yugoslav history. Her parents were both Partisans who came together under miraculous circumstances during WWII. This tale, which the director puts shortly before the end of the film, also shows a hint of forgiveness for the atrocities she had to endure from her communist parents as well as the "communist" state. Obviously a very sensitive person, her early years seem to have been characterized through an attitude of utter ignorance from her surroundings, concerning her nature and feelings. But as the Yugoslav society was being moulded she started working with her own body. That's what most of the performances are. Set against a stark white background, the stylized and ritualized performances concern themselves with "bodypolitics" that call to mind "Aktionskunst" from the 50s. Using her body as a canvas (in one scene she cuts the communist Red Star with a razorblade onto her stomach), she is at the same time personal and political, using the expressiveness and shock-value to talk about society in general. But as the performances in the film are a mixture of past and present, it is never exactly clear what is now and what was then. Only at the end are we reminded, as she herself expresses it in the last words of the film: "But that was then and this is now."