White Epilepsy
Philippe Grandrieux
2012 - 68 min - Vidéo HD - Couleur - France

"Where do images come from? This disturbing and essential question is posed by Philippe Grandrieux, and he already imposed it on himself the start, via "Sombre" (1999) up to the portrait recently devoted to Masao Adachi (FID 2011). From where, then? Maybe from the depths behind our eyes, ungraspable visions, night in suspension, promise of the end of an eclipse, between dream and nightmare. This is the start (and in truth the programme) of White Epilepsy. In a darkness barely broken by light, a mass advances: a nude back, in a long shot entirely centred on the shoulders.
The story (is it a story?) that follows this announcement has the necessity of the elementary: the encounter between this first (feminine) figure with a second masculine one. A familiar scenario. However, a slow-motion ballet between these two bodies takes place. Do we really know what became of Adam and Eve once they were cast out of Paradise? Maybe this is a representation of that. The bodies entwine, rub together, twist together, strip each other and wrestle like moving sculptures framed as a deliberately vertical image.
In this choreography, Grandrieux chooses to present gestures from a chthonian, archaic world, full of mute intensities, which ultimately aspires to immobility. The first part of a trilogy to be completed, it is about the frontiers of cinema to be crossed and pushed back into the secluded space of secrets." (Nicolas Féodoroff)