For my second (advanced) scene analysis, I have chosen to review a clip from Erwan Le Duc’s 2019 film The Bare Necessity (original language title: Perdrix). This film was lined up to premiere in Australia as the closing night feature of this year’s AF French Film Festival, however this special event was cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns. Luckily for me, I managed to catch it while overseas at the beginning of the year.

The scene I have chosen really made a lasting impression on me, and was definitely the highlight of the film. One particular moment created by Le Duc at the end of this clip instantly struck me as a moment of raw cinematic power, it simply cannot exist in any medium other than film.
I also find it to be a great analysis piece due to the fact we have already looked at numerous party scenes throughout this semester.

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Let me give you a bit of context for this scene. The man sitting on camera left is Pierre Perdrix (Swann Arlaud), a police captain who works and lives in rural France, the man sitting to his right is lieutenant Michel Smicer (Alexandre Steiger), who only plays a minor role in the film. A few days prior to this scene, Pierre was tasked with investigating a car theft, reportedly orchestrated by a cult of nudists living in the area. The victim of this crime was Juliette Webb (Maud Wyler), a young woman travelling through town while living as a nomad. Pierre, who lives with his mother and brother, promptly offers her the guest room in his family home while they try to find her car. Over the period of a few days Juliette disrupts the lives of Perdrix family, pushing them to redefine their boundaries and confront unrecognised grief. Through all of this, Juliette and Pierre begin to slowly fall in love.

The first half of this clip is a great example of expressing a characters attention through coverage. While Pierre and Michel are seated at the bar, Pierre is barely present in their conversation, and the shots used reflect this. There is little emphasis on Michel, and he often isn’t even shown on screen while he is talking. Instead, Pierre is watching Juliette dance, and the film shows his point of view repeatedly. We know right from the beginning of the scene that Juliette is the cause of Pierre’s distraction, with De Luc preceding the two-shot of Pierre and Michel with Pierre’s point of view shot. We frequently hear their conversation but don’t see it, and through this De Luc implies that their conversation is of secondary importance. For the remainder of their discussion, we frequently see a single of Pierre looking at Juliette, but we’re never shown a single of Michel, further emphasising Pierre’s absence. Even the angle at which the single of Pierre is shot implies this distance, with his eyeline facing away from Michel.

The real substance of this excerpt however, happens after this conversation, when Michel leaves the bar and Niagara’s Tchiki Boum starts playing. Pierre decides to approach Juliette, and for a short while they exchange glances, with Pierre standing cautiously at the edge of the dance floor. This exchange is covered with back and forth point of view shots shown in realtime. After this, Pierre and Juliette step closer to each other and, as the music fades out, the camera enters their subjective reality. The crowd is suddenly gone, and just Pierre and Juliette remain. They are both illuminated by a rainbow scrolling light, being shown in slow motion, creating a dreamlike/surreal feeling. The pacing of cuts between their perspectives slows with their movements and the beat of the music, letting the audience dwell in this moment.
The lighting is very focused onto the two characters, creating a vignette around each of them. This further highlights the idea that they are all the other is seeing. This alternate reality creates a space for the characters to be their true selves, whoever they would be if nobody else were in the room, and everything the camera and lighting does is there to support this.

Now you could argue that this is all a projection of Pierre’s imagination, and you’d have a valid point, but I think that isn’t really necessary to discuss when looking at this scene. To do so would be imposing the real onto the surreal. I think moments like these in film have so much power because of their impossibility. Why do we feel a need to put logic into the illogical? Maybe this tendency could further point to the difference between Hollywood and French cinema.

I guess what I have really been trying to look at, is how a characters subjective reality is represented through a scene’s decoupage. Anyone who follows a philosophy of subjectivity would argue that every situation and event is different for each person experiencing them, and I think film provides a unique platform for the representation of this.
However, I think the most powerful and interesting example of this idea, is when a filmmaker creates a moment of surrealism in order to illustrate subjectivity. Pierre and Juliette in the empty room is a perfect example of this. De Luc creates an impossible (surreal) version of reality in order to represent the subjectivity of Pierre. Moments like these simply can’t exist in any other art form. This kind of surrealism is something that really fascinates me, and I would definitely like to explore it further throughout the rest of this semester.

In conclusion, this excerpt from The Bare Necessity shows examples of a character’s subjectivity being represented through film form on two different levels. The first level being Pierre’s distracted conversation at the bar, where camera coverage focuses on where his attention resides (point of view shots, eyeline directions, etc.) The second level being the alternate reality in which only Pierre and Juliette exist, a surreal representation of what Pierre sees.