“Hello Language”: Paul Vecchiali’s Farewell to Cinema

THE WORLD'S OPINION - NOT TO BE MISSED

Often, the last film of a great filmmaker constitutes a choice object for cinephilia. Far from manifesting decadence, it is there, on the contrary, that his most radical gesture is deposited, stripped of everything. Bonjour la langue , the last film of Paul Vecchiali, completed a few days before his death, on January 18, 2023, at the age of 92 , is precisely one of these final throws of the dice. It is both an experiment on the tightrope, shot in a single day (October 4, 2022), as well as a pure melodrama, this science of emotion of which the filmmaker was a relentless practitioner. He openly quotes Chinese Frontier (1966), another last film by John Ford , the king of the western, which ended with these words that have remained famous: " So long, you bastard! " ("Goodbye, bastard!"). The last film is always a challenge.

Bonjour la langue announces itself from the start as an impromptu, one of those improvised films with an accomplice actor, like previously Trous de mémoire (1984), with Françoise Lebrun. Here, it is with Pascal Cervo, another faithful, that Paul Vecchiali shares the screen, repeating a minimal one-on-one arrangement. Jean-Luc, a musician, arrives unexpectedly at his elderly father, Charles, in his childhood home, after six years of silence. The conversation begins, at first difficult, bristling with mutual resentment. But something holds. The reunion is played out in three acts: in the courtyard, at the restaurant, then in the park. As the day goes on, the family romance is pieced together in fragments around the secret of origins.

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