Stephane Batut
Vif Argent

We saw a pale boy, dressed like Marc Almond, wandering through the markets of Paris and the Buttes Chaumont Park, his past irreversibly lost and his present suspended, as in real and authentic cinema, between reality and its double, between the Real and Phantasmagoria.

On the evening of the Premiere at “Le Champo,” eclipsed in a dark corner of the room, it is said that in that syncopated moment between one applause and another, we could glimpse the sighs of Jean Vigo, mentor, inspirer, and Prize of this first film by Stefan Batut – Vif Argent – which drew source and inspiration from the fluid, raw, and independent style of Vigo.

In the ghostly story of Juste, his reset memory relives through the memories and testimonies of the souls he ferries, as a new Parisian Charon with a lamé blazer. Batut, in the depiction of the journeys leading to Judgment, is directorially and unconsciously perfect, portraying dreamlike landscapes truly experienced by souls who sometimes choose to delay their journey to admire the beauty of the living and not only that but also to caress their hair and bodies…

Excellent is the cinematography by Celine Bozon, which weaves dreams and arpeggios into the everyday life of Paris, perfectly fusing image and corresponding chromaticism that always flirts with a disoriented and dreamlike dimension.

And if everything might also seem ancestrally ordinary and even Juste might give the impression every morning of stamping his time card composedly before embarking on the Styx, the mirabilia of (earthly) life and its memories that inexorably surface will once again stir the beating heart of the jeune fantôme, at the sight of Agathe…

And in a pyrotechnic finale, where the essence of the dream irreversibly loses all its grains of material substrate, Batut allows us to catch our breath and silently suspends the constant transition between flesh and spirit that hovers throughout the film.

Illuminating in that fragrant night of eternity, with the glow of fireflies, the desperate and lyrical embrace between Juste and Agathe, between the stone and bricks of the Bridge of Suicides, the ultimate sublime enchantment of an overturned reality, where the living disappear into the shadows of the night after that liberating dive into the water by Juste.

And Jean, from that dark corner of the room, starts and smiles in wonder.