I have always loved songs, the way they allow you to express strong emotions in a fleeting manner, said Christophe Honoré, and as well as making two huge musicals –Love Songs and Beloved, which the Filmoteca de Catalunya is reserving for a special season on the genre–, his filmography is certainly littered with tremendous tunes: from Joana Preiss dancing naked to Flavor by Girls in Hawaii in Inside Paris, to Vincent Lacoste crooning Pump Up the Volume in Sorry Angel, and timeless Nick Drake ballads floating melancholically in the school of The Beautiful Person. But this love of song could also be the definition of his style, one that has been fully assumed following the denser 17 fois Cécile Cassard and Ma mère, and marked by certain levity, imbued with a romanticism filtered through a queer eye, in keeping with the sign of the times. A human orchestra who has published novels for children and adults, written and directed theater, and even opera, following a distinguished period as a critic, Honoré does not conceal his influences – he idolizes them. He has been proven capable of recycling everything, from Ovid (Les métamorphoses) to a Nouvelle Vague reconstructed with Louis Garrel as a modern day Antoine Doinel, and with Jacques Demy as his main influence. As shown by his latest film, Sorry Angel, the 49-year-old Breton cineaste is no longer the enfant terrible who divides critics and receives no breakthrough awards. The time has come for him to look back and return to the nineties, when the writers he adored were dropping like flies as victims of AIDS. What better time to dedicate this special retrospective to him, made up of nine light, fleeting features that have been saved on the iPods of our sentimental memory.
Philipp Engel
Christophe Honoré Retrospective with the collaboration of
