What My Love Must See
( Ce que mon amour doit voir )

François Bonenfant
2012 - 11 min - Vidéo HD - Couleur - Portugal

Three distinct, clear-cut sequences as three stages of love: the love one searches for, the love that gives itself and the love that leaves in order to grow. In an opening shot, near the Tagus, in the summer evening light, a young man faces the camera lost in contemplation. Off-screen, a piece of music echoes like the sad and beautiful melody that foreshadows a love story, when the loved one’s greatest and sweetest hopes take shape. Then, under the drowsy midday sun, this other gives of himself entirely, in all his truth and materiality, his face fully bathed in light. His voice becomes embodied and he offers himself up to the person looking at him, filming him. As daylight fades on the roofs of Lisbon, the young man is still there but seems aloof, ready to take his distance; he must leave “to be born, to live, to discover the world, see the rivers’ waters flowing, hear the birds singing”. With its simple, pared down poetry, Ce que mon amour doit voir recalls the melancholy of love’s first glimmers, when separation lightly skims each instant, but also the love that leads away from the loved one to melt into the world and its immensity.
(Carine Bernasconi, Cinéma du réel 2013)