De bruit et de fureur

The first time I saw this movie it was on Télé-Québec (Provincial owned TV station) a couple of year ago at 23h00 pm (it was the late night movie) and I was amazed by it! The story is so sad but real. The character are beautiful...And the end is a must see. If you know the Bérurier Noir (A french punk-rock band) you should listen to Sur les toits and Vive le feu before watching this movie! It will put you in the right state of mind!!! After the presentation (with no ads!) I sat on my bed and said to myself: F*** how is it possible! How where they able to show this explicit hardcore, noir, avant-garde full reality movie on national television! (it was the first and only time I saw it as well, somebody probably got fired for that!) If only I had known back then I would have pressed record on my f***** VCR. Nowadays, there's no DVD version of it and to get it new on VHS it cost about 150 Euros!!! In short : It's a very well made no-budget movie that have inspired modern movie such as : Ma 6 - T va Crak-er and La haine Thanx RTB

Being the older brother of a Down's Syndrome mongloid, now passed his prime, I see what the future holds for the hearing impaired in this country. Understand, I'm not comparing the two disabilities, just the technology being used to eradicate the disability.

When my brother was born there was no genetics chromosomal testing and doctors couldn't determine if a child would be born with Down's until it came to full term. But at present these tests can be done with a fetus in the 1st trimester and parents can make a decision to abort the child or not. At least they could until Rowe vs Wade was overturned by the SCOTUS. I today's world the percentage of Down's baby's is near to none, except for the brave parents who decide to have the child regardless of its disability. The majority of Down's Syndrome population are senior and late middle aged.

The cochlear device technology is doing the same to the deaf population. More and more parents are electing their young children for the surgery. The deaf community is being chased out as the pre-cochlear population ages. Is this a good thing? Does making everyone the same make the world a better place? No, it doesn't and the consequences for it will be devastating on our society.

I have just discovered this film dating from 1988 and I had a priori never seen films by Jean-Claude Brisseau. I found this film disturbing and interesting. The film describes a suburb of the Seine Saint Denis as a place of desolation and perdition where young adolescents go to war and come to kill each other out of boredom and neglect of their parents added to a situation without prospects. We are not so far from the various facts that happen nowadays, with the difference that here the majority of party troubles are Caucasian and that the leaders are girls even more extreme than the boys. The other women are dealing with an aggressive and ruthless patriarchal society treated as objects, ordered or raped. In this dismal painting we follow the story of Bruno, a 13-year-old boy whose mother is never there because she is working to be able to find him accommodation in a more livable place. Bruno meets a neighbor and comrade who feels abandoned by his father and is in revolt against society. His father shoots rifles in his own apartment, makes a living from scheming and terrorizes the whole building. In the middle of this morbid equation, bits of poetry in the world of phantasy in which Bruno escapes, that of birds, and of a mysterious white lady, object of desire and fantasy. The film does not seem to provide an answer to the social and human idleness of the suburbs, but seems to point to the lack of inter-generational communication and class violence as the triggering scourge.

In Brisseau's precedent work "un jeu brutal" ,we made acquaintance with a scientist/serial killer and his disabled daughter ,who had no hope and were trying to nullify their life in the sound and the fury.

"De bruit et de fureur" is Loach 's "Kes" in the harsh realities of the late eighties.The hero,like Loach's is a young misfit ,whose only friend is a bird and whose mother is also absent (we never see her,we only read the notes she puts in the kitchen).And again,like in "Kes" a teacher tries to help him.The world around him is bleak,nightmarish and rough,epitomized by Cremer's -the serial killer in "un jeu brutal- character who turns his apartment into a shooting gallery.

The ending might repel some .An intense poetry emanates from the last picture .Maybe up there someone likes him...maybe...

The Nick Ray's movie spirit is not so far from this film directed by Jean Claude Brisseau. This is a beautiful, gloomy, sad story with some sequences that may puzzle you. Some dream world meanings that have nothing to do in such a movie. There is also some social elements in this French parisian suburb tale, in the middle and surrounding of those huge towers. Bruno Cremer is the only actor that I know and he is superb as a war vet who has problems with his kid; and for once the father wants to convince his son that living outside the law is the best way to do, and not the contrary...Very unusual. Cremer tries to convince his son not to have a normal life, not to become a slave.