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- Madness and anarchism in Alain Klarer's L'Air du crime are too often self-oppressed, having forgotten to live free in their minds. Elena's "terrorism" and Robert's gratuitous quest are all irrational acts perhaps, but ultimately free, a form of rebirth. Yet, some will not be able to bear this madness, chained like Stutz to a coherent structure. Thus, the film moves towards lyricism. First through Peer Raben's music, then through Hugues Ryffel's images. A play on color and light, contrasting a cold, gray, metallic frame and lighting on the rational side, and a sublime, extraordinary blue towards Lake Lucerne, on the side of night, dreams, imagination, suicide, and freedom. Even if the simple narrative sometimes takes over from the madness of the film, it remains a very rich first work, a vast fresco of symbols and ideas. Frédéric Maire ( Président of the Swiss Cinémathèque?
- Everyday life in a house where death is omnipresent, but in which, in contrast to a retirement home, mainly younger people live. Alain Klarer introduces "Bailey House" in his film, a former hotel where 44 AIDS patients live. Bailey House is a refuge for a fraction of people suffering from AIDS in the city of New York, where they find shelter, supervised by a competent team. Fellow sufferers, perhaps even friends in the face of a disease that is stigmatized by society and means social isolation for most of those affected. People of different social backgrounds meet here. However, the largest proportion is made up of young black formerly drug addicts. Bailey House, the last stop in their young life, is often even the first real home, in most cases also the most beautiful place where they have lived so far. The interior is still reminiscent of a well-kept mid-class hotel. The residents live in single rooms that have the classic hotel equipment - bed, table, TV. The individual design is limited to hanging photos and setting up nipples. The inmates live in a community, the interaction with each other is caring and loving, but nevertheless a great loneliness is felt in the individual. Above all, it is the ghettoization that affects you as a viewer. What seems so painful to be missing are the relationships to the past, to the families. Except for the visit that a young black patient receives from her two little daughters - one of the most moving moments of the film - hardly any people from "outside" appear in the Bailey House. The shocking thing is that the disease that has already become everyday life in the press, which we actually only perceive as numbers or abstract specter, gets a face in Bailey Ho use. The face of a young black woman who tells how she was diagnosed by her doctor. The face of the elegant black fashion designer, who is surprisingly relaxed by his Illness told. The face of the 52-year-old white warehouse worker, who has found a clarified foresight in the face of his illness, which he knows how to dress in impressively simple sentences. Each individual a person with a history, with dreams and hopes, hit by a disease that in our highly civilized culture is equivalent to a medieval damnation. For the viewer, this makes at least a fraction of the tension in which Bailey House lives comprehensible. For everyone, be it patients or members of the team, everyday life in Bailey House means living together with people with whom you develop a relationship that you close to your heart, in the constant awareness that they can die at any time. The helplessness in the face of the finality of this disease. And yet, even in this constant threat of near death, there are everyday rituals, festivals are celebrated. The merit of the film author lies in his limitation. He denies himself any comment, remains faithful from the beginning to the end of his role as a mediator. This restraint is the strength of this film, as it allows the viewer to deal with the pictures characterized by their own reflection. And these pictures are impressive enough. In my opinion, this is the artistic quality of this documentary: the immediacy of the camera and the immediacy with which people act in the presence of the camera. The camera never acts as an intruder, whether it accompanies a nurse to a bedridden patient or films a meeting of the care team or lets us witness lunch in the old, dignified dining room. You never have the feeling that a scene is set, you never feel pushed into the role of the intrusive voyeur. Every affected person reveals as much of himself as he is willing to do so on his own. There is a follow-up interview. For this, the camera moves, captures moments that say more than a thousand words. The pictures of the Christmas or New Year's Eve celebration, which show the effort for cheerfulness and exuberance and at the same time make visible the desolation that must adhere to a place whose inhabitants have no future, who are condemned to a presence of waiting, a waiting at the end of which is the inevitable death. The only comforting thought is that the sick have found a place here where they can spend their hardest part of life in a dignified environment. The suggestively beautiful pictures of Pio Corradi's camera do not gloss over. They confront us with a part of our social reality that is largely repressed by all of us. In this sense, this documentary is an important contemporary document that you would like to wish for as many viewers as possible. Carola Fischer
