597 - Cold Water, France, 1994. Dir. Olivier Assayas.
The music of the Fall of 1972.
Roxy Music, "Virginia Plain"; Leonard Cohen, "Avalanche"; Janis Joplin, "Me & Bobby McGee"; Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Up Around the Bend"; Nico, "Janitor of Lunacy"; Bob Dylan, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"; Alice Cooper, "School's Out"; Uriah Heap, "Easy Livin'"; Donovan, "Cosmic Wheels."
These are the songs of Gilles' and Christine's youth. That mark their memory in time.
On this night they stand in a mutual embrace. Christine stares into Gilles' eyes as they slow dance by the bonfire, and all their cares melt, thaw, and resolve themselves into a dew. They stand together, and the dark holds no terrors against them. And in this moment they know they will love each other forever.
Their love might not last till morning, but that knowledge is too perfect for them. A thought they could never conceive. What they have now is this moment, and for them this moment is everything.
Gilles and Christine are dating.
Gilles Guersaint comes from an upper-middle class home. His father is successful and wealthy and gone a lot. He loves art and wants to share it with his son. He shows him a Caravaggio. The Death of the Virgin. He had shown it to him at the Louvre. Classical painting is the one way, possibly the only way, Gilles and his father can connect.
While his father is always gone working, his mother is always gone having life experiences. So the 16-year-old Gilles is left to raise himself. He has a nanny who tells him heartbreaking stories of her life under German occupation, but he cannot connect to her.
Both of them want parents who will spend time with them. Show them some attention. Be a part of their lives. But since their parents are not a part of their lives, by choice, Christine and Gilles must warily make their precipitous way together.
Gilles and Christine talk at the supermarket. He looks through record albums. He hides them in his knapsack. He steals them.
The guard stops Christine, but Gilles gets away. She goes to the police station. He goes to school. For him it is about the same thing.
The Professeur dronely reads excerpts from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782), page 121, a passage that might be deemed too shocking for today's classrooms--with references to Madame Francoise-Louise de Warens' sending of Rousseau to Turin written on the chalkboard. Assayas recreates Francois Truffaut's scene from The 400 Blows as Gilles passes his record collection person-to-person across the classroom. Where Antoine Doinel was there the innocent and unfortunate recipient of the pin-up in the all-boy classroom, here Gilles is the instigator in this coed classroom. The teacher responds aggressively and even violently by physically throwing Gilles out of the class while hurling verbal assaults at him.
His father is exasperated, but tries to be practical. He wants to look through art books together. He advises his son to live like an adult.
Meanwhile, Christine sits at the police station waiting to talk to the chief. When he enters she relates a story regarding the way the interrogator treated her. The Inspecteur is stuck. She has leveled a serious accusation, and he must pursue it. However, she laughs, suggesting she might be toying with them as her one means of power. He informs her that he has no choice but to release her to her father, who has arrived to collect her, and he seems sympathetic to her plight.
Her father sends her once again to the institution. Beausoleil. Beautiful Sun.
When Gilles gets into trouble, his father's response is to tell him not to get caught next time.
When Christine gets into trouble, her father's response is to lock her up.
Chistine escapes and goes to the local rave, where, in the midst of others' drugtaking, she grabs a pair of scissors and cuts her hair. When a couple of girls try to stop her, she stabs one of them in the shoulder and creates a commotion.
But Gilles arrives on bicycle and finds her. He goes to her. She looks at him with hopeful eyes, needing love. His presence is a comforting emollient.
Some kids do drugs.
They pour gas on the grass. They start the bonfire.
As the music plays and the kids dance; as some of them light up and others start the bonfire by dousing the grass with gasoline; as they break windows and drag furniture out of the house to fuel the fire; Gilles and Christine enter their own world. And for a time they are safe, and happy, and in love.
Gilles and Christine kiss
Leonard Cohen sings "Avalanche."
In this moment, as they stand together, holding each other, moving towards the bonfire, as they kiss, one feels for them. It is a moment of fragile happiness, of delicate peace, of transitory hope.
She tells him of a place about which her friend has written her. The girl who stopped coming to school. A commune. The girl's father is a painter and has gone there. And taken the family. The girl loves it. And has sparked the desire within Christine. Christine longs to go. And take Gilles with her.
She gives him her ultimatum. Come with me now. Forsake your family. And your money. And your friends. Leave all to be with me. Together. Forever.
He hesitates. She leaves. He calls her back. She comes. He says Yes. They go. They walk for miles. In the cold. Their breaths waft from their mouths like flue fog.
They arrive at the water. The cold water. Where they will consummate their amorous elopement.
Until tomorrow.
When life begins again with a clean slate. A blank note.
And an uncertain future.
Beside the deep, lonely, cold water.
* * * *
--Olivier Assayas--
I needed Caravaggio in the film because classic paintings was something that was important both for me and my father. That's how we somehow connected. I functioned as a painter or a poet. I just put raw emotions on the screen. So I had a sense of reliving my youth. It gave me a sense that cinema had the capacity of making you reexperience moments, emotion, in your life, and now when I'm looking back on it I have this strange feeling like this movie belongs to the 70s. It's like a screen between my actual [experience] of being a teenager and my memories of it. When I think of my teenage years, Cold Water imposes itself on it.
We shot the party scene in five days.
There were no boarders between filmmaking and reality. Those kids were dressed like we were dressed in the 70s, but it didn't feel like a period piece. . . . To me it was still the present.
The shoot is like an art piece, an experience.
They experienced something that's possibly stronger than whatever actually ends up on screen. and ever since I've had this sense that the shoot of a film should not be work. Cold Water helped me realize it.
I wrote those songs into the film. The songs became the narrative. I knew I wanted the dawn with this sense of absolute loss that "The Janitor of Lunacy" conveys. I knew I wanted this peak of energy that the CCR song conveys.
I designed the scene always knowing who was where at what time, and left myself a lot of space to be carried by the music.
The established logic is that you do things faster and faster but here I was constantly slowing things down. A lot of scenes were just very long tracking shots. And I knew I wanted to give myself space to improvise. I spent a lot of time choosing the extras.
I didn't want any actors.
The message is that there is no message. They're rushing to a dead end, really, because we know that the place they are going doesn't exist, which is a little bit what youth is about. And in that sense that's ultimately what the blank note says. He will stay with the question mark. There's no closure there. There is no moral to the story. There is no meaning. The meaning is something he will have to figure out in the future. She leaves on a blank note that will echo through his whole life.
To me, what this film is about is teenage love.
A relationship at that age is something so essential, so important, that all of a sudden it is what makes you an individual. You have to make the decisions that will define your identity, because before that you are just part of the group. You are just one more teenager. But if all of a sudden you become a couple, you have to question yourself, and that's how you grow.
16mm, handheld, non-actors, 4 weeks, no pressure.
Cold Water is a punk rock version of the 1970s.
I grew up in that environment; I had those kinds of conversations with my father.
* * * *
Road to Budapest
Then we heard that the Russians were coming.
The Russian army was full of youngsters from the Caucasus and Mongolia. They were savages. Real savages. I don't know how to explain it.
Very well. Since you cannot read for us, you can tell us what you remember. If you had read it, you would remember.
What is this ridiculous object? It should interest you.
I might have been able to help but it's too late now.
Your father's here for you.
That took an hour of my life.
You don't have to take them, but I'll have to tell Dr. Varennes.
Mr. Guersaint, continue reading.
Remember , which I showed you at the Louvre?
Caravaggio
Mess around but don't get caught.
live like an adult
I can see she's unhappy but I don't know how to help her.
She's only 16! I can't let her go running off!
She wants to be alone.
Maybe it's her way of telling you something. Like pay more attention to her.
She judges me. Well, I'm not giving up my life for her. Just like with her father. Has to be the center of attraction.
I'll live the way I want.
Sorry I got all worked up. She means a lot to me. I don't want to lose her.
Chloe
She didn't vanish. Her dad's a painter. They moved to l an old farm in the Lozere region. The farm's full of artists. They redid the place. It's great.
I want you to come.
I don't have a thing on me.
Neither do I.
We will be all alone, you know. No family. No money. No home. You will have me and I will have you.
I know.
There is no phone or water or electricity.
We will be there by dark.
It doesn't look that far on the map.
It's a winding road, at least 12 miles.
There are no cars on the road, and it will be dark soon.
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